Living the Life

Four years ago, weekends started with coffee and breakfast at the West End markets or a walk along the river to Southbank. Three days a week I cycled over Highgate Hill to work while my partner, Justin, dropped the kiddies at childcare, on my days off I met friends in The Froggy Park or attended Toddler Storytime at the West End Library. On the surface we were the typical young family negotiating a work-life balance. We were busy and tired.

Friends would ask, Now you have kids are you going to buy a house in the suburbs? But why leave West End? We loved our community. One evening I sat on my balcony trying to feed a child in tantrum mode, to keep calm I watched the active commuters cycling home along Riverfront Drive or Brisbane Ferries shuttling workers home up river. At that moment my neighbour walked past looking up and I waved sheepishly, embarrassed by the noise. Five minutes later, the same neighbour walked through my door and joined me on my balcony with wine and bubbles, I could have cried with relief. We shared a drink and laughed ignoring the now quiet toddlers captivated by bubbles. So to answer the question about leaving West End, I answered vaguely, not just now, never elaborating. But we were planning to leave our beloved home because we had a secret: an alternative plan for our life.

Love West End, miss West End. But leave we did. Not for the burbs, but for a life unknown. We eventually told our friends that wanted to live on a sailboat. A boat? With tiny kids? Is it safe? WHY?!

In June 2016, after selling or giving away almost everything we owned, we quit our good jobs, bundled the remaining items into our car and drove south to visit family and to practice living in a small space. We borrowed my Mums caravan and went camping in a Victorian winter. Ahhh, think of the FREE TIME, I thought. Having forgotten in the euphoria of departure that looking after two toddlers in an unknown, unbounded space is a full time job. Despite spending most of our time running after toddlers, we had fun and learnt how to live together. Three months later, we felt ready to take the next step and move our family to Malaysia where we would try living on Justins parents boat.

Before the boat would be ready for us to live on, it required some work, so we found a little house on a little Island near a marina. For two months, Justin and his parents worked full time on the boat while I embraced child care. Looking after young kids alone in a foreign country was tough, I couldnt even work out how to feed us. I had no car, two toddlers and the nearest shop was 500m away. Unfortunately, not eating wasnt an option so I went shopping.

Off down the road I traipsed with toddlers in the midday heat past the rice paddies and buffalo. The shop: dark skinny aisles piled high with yet-to-be-stacked goods; the air thick with humidity and the smell of onions left too long; two toddlers playing hide and seek; and me, trying to read ingredient lists in Malaysian Bahasa. I remember the first thing I made resembling a meal chicken stir-fry with sweet soy and noodles it felt like a pivotal victory in the battle Family vs Adventure Unknown. Things got easier and there was a pool at the marina, so most afternoons we would make the 45 minute journey. The pool was our happy place, and we swam and splashed away our afternoons. One afternoon at the pool, a wonderful thing happened. Another boat child arrived. Suddenly, I wasnt the only crazy mum, I didnt feel so alone. We bonded while running after toddlers in a swimming pool and were still friends to this day. Eventually the boat was ready for us and the next big adjustment loomed boat life!

We moved onto the boat, trading rice paddies and buffalo for waves and fish and pointed the boat north toward Thailand. Justins parents planned to jump off in Phuket a week later. We swam in turquoise water, learnt to handle the boat and revelled in our new cruising life. Bliss. On the last day to Phuket we had light wind, so Justin put the engine on. Moments later the 30 year old engine turned its last. Kaput. A week into our adventure afloat it was over. Back on land, I looked for a place to live while Justin and his parents looked for a boat yard to haul out and replace the engine. Again I was alone caring for kids in a new country. Justin and his parents worked hard in the sweltering Thai heat and humidity to dismantle the boat and organise a new engine. Nothing happens quickly and a month into our Thai visa, encompassing Christmas and New Years in Phuket, we were ready to try again.

With the boat and shiny new engine back in the water, Justins parents departed. Alone now, we headed across the large bay to visit friends living an alternative life and there we spent an idyllic afternoon on a quiet beach drinking beer together. From that beach every possibility lay in front of us. But right in front of us, we could see trip boats ferrying tourists to a dazzling sandy island, and we thought, why not go there? We can go for free! The sandy island was a little exposed being almost covered at high tide, but newbie confidence had our anchor up and the next morning. As we arrived at the tiny little island, I looked windward to see a line of cloud and rain inbound. I assumed, wrongly, that we had time to drop and dig in the anchor. With the anchor barely touching the bottom, boof, the wind started pushing us toward a cliff. Newbie confidence was quickly replaced with newbie panic. Abort abort! Up came the anchor, back to our safe little beach. Lesson one in becoming-a-sailor: know your limits, assess the risks, dont be afraid to accept a lesser option. Slowly we learnt our lessons while simultaneously learning to find food in every bay and give kids daily exercise. During the evenings we poured over charts and researched places to visit. One particular island group called us further north: wild and remote with superior snorkeling. The Surin Islands were several days sail along the open coast. If we could get there, we would know we could do anything, but we had no pilot guide and little experience, still we decided to try.

We started inching our way north, stopping in manic Patong to run the gauntlet of tourists and ladyboys to buy food. We met other cruisers coming south who gave us maps and advice. We didnt realise it, but as a family sailing with young kids we stood out among the grey nomads: others were looking out for us. Along the way we found white sandy beaches shared only with seagulls. We discovered Thailand without tourists. We connected with other boat families and went to a full moon party in a bar built of flotsam. And we dropped anchor at the magical Surin Islands! We snorkelled with baby sharks, sat in the luminous aqua water and had fishes nibble at our toes, we climbed rocks and spied clown fish peeking out from anemones. We were happy drunk on life, our success and possibilities. Sadly though, the clock was ticking on our Thai visa. Good things really cannot last forever. Crash bang reality. Now we needed to make a big decision. With the wet season coming, what should we do next? We sat down late one night, looked at each other and asked the question are we ready to give this up? NO!

We began boat hunting, in the Mediterranean.

We hired a house for a month in La Coruna on the north west coast of Spain, where we spent days exploring a new culture and nights researching boats. After two months and another move to visit Justins family in Scotland, the right boat turned up in Southern France. She was a fixer upper, but affordable. Justin and his Dad flew down to have a look: she was a keeper, but required a couple of months of work before she could be launched. So, for the third time in a year, Justin was working full time on boat maintenance and I plunged back into full-time childcare. Alone, I moved myself, the kids and ALL our possessions to France, where at the end of a twelve hour day, I hired a car and learnt to drive on the other side of the road. As I crashed into a new bed that night after nearly no sleep for two days, I yearned for simple life of work, childcare and weekends. I felt alone, I speak no French and I had no internet. One night my son stopped breathing. I tried to call an ambulance, but I didnt know the number, my address, how to say respiratory distress and didnt even have phone reception anyway. Fortunately he was OK, but I was shaken to the core. Another important lesson learnt: plan for the unexpected. This wasnt the adventure I signed up for, but the boat was paid for, there was no going home now.

In the year since we left Australia, nearly half was spent on boat work. I look back on it as one of tough times, but also one of discovery, hope and optimism. The savings went down fast, but now we had our own floating home and we were the masters of our destiny! Or so we thought.

We launched Dizzie on 13 October 2017, just in time for winter storms in the Mediterranean to make sailing a potentially precarious activity. By October, holiday makers have retreated back to their colder northern homes and full time sailors retreat into a marina. So as soon as we started sailing, we stopped! We chose a marina with other boat-kids, in a little town at the bottom of Sicily. I didnt know it at the time, but it was exactly what we needed: to be surrounded by sailors more experienced, to be still and connect to a place.

The kids joined the state preschool five mornings a week where no one spoke English, Justin worked flat out on Dizzie and I embraced learning Italian.

Learning a new language was something for me, an accomplishment that I could own. Being a boat Mum, meant that everything I did was for the kids or the boat. I was used to working hard and owning the satisfaction of achievement. Now I was working hard and had nothing to show for it, it was wholly unsatisfying. Turns out this is a very common feeling among boat Mums. My confidence plummeted. All I did was cook and clean (which I wasnt doing entirely successfully). Learning to speak Italian gave me something of my own as an achievement. I needed it for self-confidence and to communicate with the preschool teachers. After six months of a delightful winter shared with wonderful families and salty sailors, we were ready FINALLY to realise our dream of sailing and living on our own boat. FINALLY, nearly two years after quitting our West End life, we were on the cusp of living our dream.

We left, said sad farewells (in broken Italian) to preschool, threw the dock lines and headed out into the open sea. Our first stop was a day trip to Malta and we had champaign sailing, but before we even had the chance to see the historic capital city bad weather chased us back to Sicily. Here we waited for better weather in a big safe harbour beside the captivating city of Siracuse. One month into the five month sailing season it felt like all we did was wait for good sailing weather, or run from bad weather. and it was still too cold to swim. I felt deflated: for more than a decade Id had a goal and now I had none. If you aim to climb a mountain, you plan, prepare, practice, you do it. You stand on the top, you raise your arms in the cold wind and cheer, you look down at where youve come from and realise an amazing achievement. There is resolution, completion, and acknowledgement. Well. we had reached our summit and there was nothing there. No-one gave me a high-5 and said, You worked hard! You made it! I looked on from my proverbial mountain and all I saw was more path, not up, not down, just onward into the mist. When I realised why I felt so down, I was able to grow past it and start enjoying life for what it was. Life is brief, the world is fascinating, and I have the front row seat to watch my kids grow. I saw the roses in the mist.

Im happy to say that since arriving in Greece two years ago, we have now found our groove. We travelled from Greece through the Med, across the Atlantic Ocean to South America and the Caribbean. Our lifestyle gives us the opportunities that other travel lacks. We rummage for the best apples with everyone else in the markets, we explore ancient ruins, but delve deeper into the issues of modern culture, we catch buses with the residents and avoid cruise ship days because we can. We boat-school in the morning and become free spirits in the afternoon. We are in tune with planetary rhythms; we eat dinner at sunset, marvel at the fish life on a new moon, feel the temperature drop before the rain comes.

Its not an easy life, but its never boring and we are living it together.

Lynita and family are currently in Martinique and will be heading south in another week or so.

All images by Lynita Howie

The rest is here:

A different Life: a West End family's adventures on the high seas - The Westender

Ever since the shadow of coronavirus first started to creep up on us during the AW20 womenswear shows in Paris and Milan, questions have proliferated on just how fashion houses could go about showing their work at this time -- packing coughing guests tight next to one another for hours on end is not, after all, a savvy move during a global pandemic.

As weve seen during this most recent couture week, the overwhelmingly favoured option for debuting collections has been the fashion film. And with the first-ever Paris Fashion Week Online kicking off today, were sure to see the mediums reign continue, for this season at least.

At Louis Vuitton, however, a quick online flick isnt all well be seeing. They are indeed part of the official Paris Fashion Week Online calendar, showing a creative film at 14:30 CEST. This is, however, simply the introduction to an itinerant series of events that will see Louis Vuittons Message in a Bottle -- the title of Virgil Ablohs SS21 collection for the house -- travel the world.

Shot at Louis Vuittons Maison de Famille at Asnires, just outside Paris, tomorrows screening will see movers packing up Louis Vuitton shipping containers and loading them onto a barge, which sails down the River Seine and leaves Paris, according to a release. It isnt just the collection that youll find on board: on it, a colourful crew of animated characters called Zoooom with friends are hiding as stowaways.

After a month at sea, the shipment will dock in Shanghai, where a full-scale Louis Vuitton SS21 Mens runway show will take place on August 6th. Later in the year, therell be a third event in Tokyo, with further possible stops on the collections world tour to be announced.

As for the collection itself, itll be an extensive offering of around 80 looks, comprising new looks made from recycled material, looks repeated from the AW20 collection, looks freely created by the studio during the lockdown using recycled material, and new looks created from existing ideas.

Louis Vuittons proposed showcasing model is certainly future-forward, capitalising on the universal accessibility of film, while quenching a thirst for live runway shows. Its also a clever move at a time when border restrictions around the world prevent the full roster of typical show attendees from descending upon the industrys traditional centres en masse. Who knows, if Louis Vuittons proposal is anything to go by, we may just be entering an era in which, rather than going to see the shows, the shows come to you.

More:

Louis Vuitton Menswear is taking to the high seas for SS21 - i-D

Remember Skull & Bones? Ubisoft announced a nautical open world game about pirates on the high seas, with Assassin's Creed's naval combat serving as a base for the action. It sounded like a winner, and we were pretty interested to see how it turned out. Unfortunately, the game has been delayed multiple times since its debut at E3 2017. Most recently, we heard the game will be skipping next financial year, meaning it won't release until mid-2021 at the absolute earliest.

However, the game is apparently still alive. A new report from VGC has the latest on the seafaring adventure, and it seems development veered into rocky waters. The project has reportedly been rebooted after failed attempts to make the game a "premium box" open world, akin to Far Cry or Watch Dogs.

This is according to anonymous development sources, who are also saying Skull & Bones is becoming a "live" game. As VGC writes, the title will contain a persistent world, featuring "quests, characters and storylines that will drastically evolve and change over time". Apparently, Fortnite's "live storytelling" aspects have been a big influence. It sounds like the game will end up in the same waters as Microsoft's Sea of Thieves -- a live, online multiplayer ocean full of pirates that evolves through seasonal updates.

Elisabeth Pellen, writer and director of cel-shaded shooter XIII, has taken over as creative director after Justin Farren moved to another studio.

So, Skull & Bones is still happening, but it's taking on a completely different format. Instead of a big open world blockbuster like Ubisoft's other games, it's becoming a persistent online experience. Here's hoping it's shipshape whenever it comes to shore.

Read more from the original source:

Skull & Bones Reportedly Rebooted Into an Ongoing 'Live' Game - Push Square

Dhyan Ramakrishnan, 28, a seafarer of third officer rank hailing from Payyoli, a municipal town in Keralas Kozhikode district, does farming and gardening for his physical and mental well-being.

He has been ashore for ten months. His efforts to join a ship have been delayed due to travel restrictions imposed by governments world over to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic.

Dhyan is frustrated at the long wait to join a ship on his next contract, managing his finances tightly in the absence of any income.

In Varanasi, Varsha, wife of chief officer Pankaj Gupta, is disappointed that her husband is not home after his original contract ended in mid-March.

Seafarers are keeping the global supply chain moving and fulfilling the needs of nations but are not allowed to disembark on completion of their contracts.

I am not just talking about my husband, there are thousands of people who are still stranded on ships. Neither are they able to work properly on the ship nor can they come back home, she explains to BusinessLine.

Varsha lives with her three-year-old son and 75-year-old father-in-law, who underwent surgery in January. The child also had a surgery in February and was admitted to hospital for three days. I managed all this alone. Now, I am also diagnosed with uterus tuberculosis. I have to visit the doctor frequently. At this time of epidemic, I cannot go outside with a child. Now it is very difficult to manage this situation alone, she says.

Due to Covid-19 and the lockdown, it was not practical for Guptas company to sign him off, though his reliever is already on-board. Now, governments and many companies are taking the initiative for crew change, but I am not seeing any positive response and efforts from his company, Varsha says. They are waiting for resumption of international flights while saying the Vande Bharat Mission flights are not for seafarers.

I cant explain my physical and mental condition. With every passing day, I am getting more and more frustrated. I want my husband at home. We really need him, she adds.

The outbreak of coronavirus and the consequent travel restrictions across the world and the lockdown in India have hit the maritime industry hard in terms of crew change and repatriation of seafarers.

Travel restrictions have also doused the job prospects of Indian seafarers working on foreign-flag ships due to their inability to join ships at foreign ports. The restlessness of crew working on board and those waiting on land for their next assignment is palpable. Seafarers on board were unable to sign off from ships after their contract ended due to stoppage of international flights to return home. They had their tenures extended, posing a humanitarian crisis to the global shipping industry, not to mention the safety of ships and the cargo.

Big Indian shipping workforceShipping is one of the very few industries that continue to run, carrying cargo including essentials such as medicines, food and energy, during the worst pandemic to have hit the world in many decades. While the virus has ravaged businesses and taken away tens of thousands of jobs on land, shipping is one industry where employment is still available. This is because of the nature of the industry where crew rotation every 4-8 months on ships is the global rule.

Each ship has a minimum manning number stipulated by global laws. If that is breached, the ship is considered unseaworthy and cannot sail.

Government authorities and industry representatives have sensed they have a problem on their hands. After all, India is one of the top suppliers of crew to the global shipping industry. The country has 2,08,800 seafarers employed on Indian and foreign-flag ships, accounting for about 10 per cent of the global seafarers and is ranked the third largest supplier of crew to the global shipping industry.

Indias role in world trade is small in relation to its shipping workforce, as a result of which ships are not contracted to touch Indian shores too often. However, due to the breakdown of logistics (air travel and visa clearances) worldwide, Indian staff are not able to hand over duty to those on the next leg of the trip. Their contracts are extended for months on end. This leads to crew fatigue, with serious implications for ship safety and cargo.

India was the first to design a detailed standard operating procedure to enable crew change of Indian seafarers at Indian ports and anchorages. It is also the only industry whose employees have been allowed to travel abroad for the purposes of crew change using chartered flights.

These efforts have eased the situation only a wee bit as the complex, time-consuming approval processes for bringing back seafarers on the return leg of chartered flights, the challenges involved in moving seafarers from distant places to airports in Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai for onward journey and vice versa, the constantly changing rules in crew change hubs overseas, lack of visas due to closure of embassies and visa offices and the closure of maritime training institutes, critical for revalidation of seafarers certificates continue to roil the industry.

Ship owners and managers have also resorted to the last and expensive option of diverting ships from their normal course to the anchorages of Indian ports just to drop off crew and for on-board replacements. The diversions entail loss of revenue to the ship owner as the ship is considered to be off-hired during such detour, besides the extra insurance costs.

The situation has eased substantially as far as backlog cases are concerned. However, crew change being an on-going process, the effort needs to continue on a sustained basis, says Amitabh Kumar, Director General of Shipping.

More than 1,00,000 Indian seafarers are on board ships at any given point. Between May 19 and July 9, 224 charter flights run by ship management and crewing firms have helped 15,538 seafarers (including staff employed on cruise liners) to return home and about 7,610 to join ships overseas. Besides, some 17,000 seafarers have signed off from ships calling at Indian ports and some 7,000 have boarded ships since March 23.

The difference in the number of seafarers who have signed off and signed on is an indication of the number of jobs lost by Indians, say industry officials.

Key workers but ignoredFour months into the lockdown, the shipping industry is still waiting for the world to recognise seafarers as key workers. A call by several international agencies, including the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), the International Labour Organisation and even the United Nations, to designate seafarers as key workers to facilitate their free movement has fallen on deaf ears of governments, including in India.

This treatment to an industry that carries over 90 per cent of world trade only shows how little has been done, says Deepak Singh, a Delhi-based third engineer waiting for his next ship since August last year.

Many companies cannot afford charter flights. In fact, seafarers working in smaller companies are forced by their manning agents to extend contracts, says Kolkata-based Captain Kunal Das, who has been at sea on board a bulk carrier for over eight months now.

Depression, anxiety, stress and insecurity are at highest levels in seafarers both on-board and ashore.

It is difficult to understand why, even as they deliver the products we need to survive the current crisis, seafarers are being denied basic human rights, says Captain Rajesh Unni, Founder and CEO of ship management firm Synergy Group.

To all intents and purposes, seafarers are enslaved to global trade. By denying them freedom of movement, seafarers are imprisoned in their place of work, he says.

The shipping industry has done everything in its power to bang the drum loud and hard about their plight, but progress is proving painfully slow. We need a systematic approach to crew changeovers, not ad hoc sticking plasters. We need airports opened up, and aircraft landing slots and clearances granted with far more urgency. We need visas to be fast-tracked. And, more than anything, we need politicians and civil servants to help us cut through the red tape, Unni adds.

Too little, too lateWhatever the Indian government has done, the bottom line is that its all too little too late, says Kalpesh Dave, a third mate, from Pune.

We are chartering flights, pooling ships to and from ports and mobilising enormous resources and efforts for very little gain, says Bjorn Hojgaard, chief executive officer at Hong Kong-based Anglo-Eastern Univan Group, one of the worlds top ship management companies.

Despite IMO together with industry having served up the operating procedures for safe crew change to governments worldwide and despite the repeated appeals from industry organisations about the need to act now, the relaxations that we have seen are not enough to even catch up with the backlog of delayed relief. As a consequence, stress and anxiety, both with the people on board the ships but certainly also with their colleagues ashore who have been anxiously waiting for a contract and a ship, continue to grow, says Hojgaard.

The closure of maritime training institutes is another key area of concern for seafarers whose employment certificates have expired or are expiring soon and need to be revalidated.

To provide relief and facilitate jobs, the Directorate General of Shipping (DG Shipping) has extended the validity of seafarers certificates that are expiring on or before December 31 till December 31, 2021. The DG Shipping has also framed the standard operating procedure for revalidation of certificates of seafarers intending to join ships prior to October 31.

This is because seamen whose certificates are expiring in January, February and March 2021 are not being considered for allotment of ships and will remain jobless. Employers typically demand at least 6 to 12 months validity of all certificates prior to joining.

Seafarers say that resuming international flights is the only solution for smooth signing off and joining ships. This is a call the government has to take. But this does not look like happening in the near future. For the time being, the ordeal of crew on the high seas continues.Source: The Hindu Business Line

The rest is here:

Caught between the virus and the deep sea - Hellenic Shipping News Worldwide

While the Carter-Knowles clan combine business and pleasure on the private jet, the yacht, it seems, is just for pure fun.

Jay-Z and Beyonc struggle along, making over $100 million dollars a year and with a combined net worth approaching $1.5 billion. It's tough at the top. And, trust us, they don't deny themselves the very best of everything. Beyonc gave Jay-Z a $40 million private jet for his first Father's Day. Jay-Z gave Queen B a private island in the Bahamas. It called how the other half lives, the A-list high life.

And so they could sail up to their island paradise in style, they bought a $70 million 212 Galactica yacht! Jay-Z bought it as a birthday present for Bey. Well, the plane was no use on the island. See, there's no runway.

While the Carter-Knowles clan combine business and pleasure on the private jet, the yacht, it seems, is just for pure fun. It has sun deck aplenty and shaded spots where you can sip champers and eat canaps.

And inside? The interior is luxurious and custom-designed and comes complete with guest rooms, a fully-beamed master bedroom, and a fully equipped kitchen.

And it seems that the salty sea eye makes Jay-Z and Beyonc a little frisky at times! Lately, the couple has been spotted on a $200 million dollar plus superyacht. If you are interested, you can charter the 213-foot $40 million Galactica for a mere half-million a week! You can take your friends and split the cost. We advise you get your reservations early. There's bound to be high demand at that price.

Here's a look inside Jay-Z and Beyonc's life on the high seas. It's tough, but somebody's got to do it.

The Netherlands-built Galactica yacht cost Jay-Z and Beyonc $70 million. And it's worth every penny. The good ship Galactica is 213-feet of seagoing luxury.

Even better, the yacht has room for 12 guests. So, friends and family can come along and enjoy the fun.

The guest-rooms are to die for, having been customed designed. The full-beamed master suite has its own private balcony. And there's a VIP suite on the top deck. Really? Who could possibly be more important that Jay-Z and Queen B? We hear Kanye West wants tooccupy it. Dream on.

RELATED: Kanye West And Jay-Z: A Deeper Look At Their Relationship

And don't forget that outdoor space. There's an outdoor pool, Jacuzzi, open and covered deck space, together with several outdoor sheltered dining spaces.

And Jay-Z and Beyonc don't have to lift a finger! There's a staff of 13 who takes care of everything. If a gourmet meal is needed, they just call the chef in the full-sized kitchen. Or Bey can ring for a server to pour more champers as she lounges in the Jacuzzi. And the captain and his crew do their best to ensure smooth sailing. And if Blue Ivy, Suri, and Rumi are along for the ride, the nannies are there to keep the peace.

RELATED: Little Know Fact About Jay-Z And Beyonc's Eldest: Blue Ivy

Jay-Z and Beyonc seem a little more relaxed and less high-powered on the high seas. They might bob around in a dinghy or just lounge by the pool or in the Jacuzzi. They sip drinks outdoors in sheltered hideaways. It's the perfect getaway deal.

But there must be something about all that fresh, salty sea air.

How can we tell? Well, there's a lot of PDA on the boat. They just can't seem to help themselves! And gosh knows what goes on behind the closed doors of the master.

Sometimes they use the yacht for a family getaway. Sometimes it just Jay-Z and Bey. But when they are of a mind to have a party, well they can take a dozen people with them and have a seagoing ball.

RELATED: 20 Photos Of Jay-Z And Beyonc Just Flaunting Their Wealth

Where the heck do they go? Well, there's Cannes, the Mediterranean, and the Caribbean to explore. Jay-Z and Bey can sit and enjoy the view or take the dinghy on to shore and enjoy the beach or the local nightlife. If they roll up to The Cannes Film Festival there are ample opportunities to invite friends and colleagues aboard for totally A-list parties.

Lately, Jay-Z and Beyonc have been seen cruising on a larger $200 million-plus yacht. This one has a beauty salon, a surround-sound cinema room, a helipad, and (believe it or not) a basketball court. It's only a matter of time before they invest in their next necessity, a helicopter. And they probably need a stock of basketballs. Overshoot the mark and you might just have balls bobbing in the ocean.

And with the advent of the new yacht, there's an opportunity for yacht wannabees everywhere. See, the $70 million 213 foot Galactica can be chartered at the bargain-basement price of around half a million -- a week! As we said, get your reservations in early. You wouldn't want to miss out!

Are we jealous of the Carter-Knowles, with their private islands and jets and luxury yachts? Don't be silly, of course, we are. Aren't you?

NEXT: Who Was Beyonc Before Jay-Z?

Did Britney Spears Post A Cryptic Cry For Help? Fans Say 'Call 911' Is Written In Her Eyelashes

Deb graduated with a B.F.A. in creative writing and is currently working on a low-residency MFA, with a focus on nonfiction and creative nonfiction. She teaches creative writing part-time.

Original post:

Life Aboard Jay-Z and Beyonce's $70 Million Yacht | TheThings - TheThings

The New Zealand Defence Force is on maritime operations in the Pacific, monitoring high seas fishing activity for the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency and supporting fisheries patrols inside Fijis Exclusive Economic Zone.

New Zealand contributes to efforts to prevent, deter and eliminate illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing in the region, and ensure fisheries are managed effectively for future generations.

Commander Joint Forces New Zealand Rear Admiral Jim Gilmour says the operating environment has changed with international COVID-19 restrictions, which has resulted in reduced patrols in recent months.

The patrols this month have been coordinated with the Republic of Fiji Navy and FFA agencies to help deter and detect illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing activity.

Areas of interest will be covered by both maritime and aerial surveillance patrols, says Rear Admiral Gilmour.

The Royal New Zealand Navy offshore patrol vessel HMNZS Otago left Devonport Naval Base last week and is currently operating within Fijis 1.3 million square kilometre EEZ.

The ship has a SH-2G(I) Seasprite helicopter on board which will provide aerial surveillance over areas and vessels of interest, while crew on a Royal New Zealand Air Force P-3K2 Orion aircraft are also carrying out patrols as part of the fisheries protection operation.

The patrols will be targeting suspicious fishing activity, particularly relating to the highly migratory and commercially valuable yellowfin tuna.

Maritime Component Commander Commodore Mat Williams says with COVID-19 prevention measures front of mind, the ships crew will not be boarding foreign fishing vessels, but will be hailing vessels and providing information to the FFA and Fijian authorities to help with the detection and deterrence of illegal fishing activity.

HMNZS Otago will stop in Suva on Thursday to refuel.

Commodore Williams says refuelling the ship will be carried out without physical interaction between port authorities and members of the crew.

The patrols will continue until the end of the month.

HMNZS Otago is an offshore patrol vessel which undertakes a range of roles including patrolling, surveillance, search and rescue, and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.

See the original post here:

Defence Force on fisheries patrols in the Pacific - The Bay's News First - SunLive

Motorists are advised to avoid Kloof Road and make use of alternative routes. A large tree has uprooted and is blocking the road. This is a result of localised flooding in the area along with strong winds from the cold front.

A severe weather warning has been issued for the Western Cape with more flooding, heavy rains, strong winds and snow expected over the weekend.

Various informal settlements across the city have been affected by heavy rains experienced last night. According to Disaster Risk Management, officials will be making assessments of formal settlements on Friday, July 10.

A tree was also uprooted in the Atlantis Industrial area, damaging a vehicle. Power outages are being experienced in Mitchells Plain, Claremont, Philippi, Lotus River and Retreat.

Many roadways across the city have been flooded and Transport is attempting to clearing roadways as quickly as possible.

The NSRI has advised locals to steer clear of coastal areas as rough seas and high waves are expected.

With a second of three cold fronts forecast by the SA Weather Service to land along the Western Cape coastline late on Friday and into Saturday and with the first of these three cold fronts that has now moved further along the Western Cape coastline towards the Eastern Cape coastline the National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI) is appealing for public caution with high, rough seas and gale force winds being experienced along the coastal regions of South Africa lasting into Monday and possibly into Tuesday, said the NSRI in a statement.

NSRI responded to three incidents related to the severe weather during Thursday in Knysna, Millers Point and Mossel Bay.

A third large cold front forecast for Monday is currently being monitored by the SA Weather Service (SAWS).

There is a concern that the lulls being experienced in between these cold fronts may give a false impression of improving conditions.

Localised flooding, storm surges, gale force winds and high seas are some of the winter weather phenomena currently being experienced from these cold fronts. Gale force winds and high seas are being experienced along the coast and the forecast cold fronts may result in damage to infrastructure and beach erosion. Disruption to Port and small harbour activities can be expected.

With storms and high seas along coastal regions our concern is for smaller vessels at sea which may have difficulty navigating through the conditions. We are also appealing to boaters, paddlers, beach goers, surfers, coastal hikers, anglers and the public to be cautious around the coastline and to follow South African Weather Service (SAWS) forecasts, said NSRI CEO, Dr Cleeve Robertson, on Friday. We urge beach goers and coastal hikers to stay away from the coastline, as dangerous waves or surges may catch them off-guard and could potentially sweep them off the rocks along the shoreline, added Robertson.

All City services and external agencies will be on standby to deal with the predicted adverse weather conditions.

Residents are reminded to please log any weather-related emergencies and/or impacts to the Citys Public Emergency Communication Centre on 021 480 7700 from a cellphone or 107 from a landline.

Also read: NSRI warns to steer clear of coast ahead of stormy weather

Picture: Facebook/Nicola Jowell

Follow this link:

Weather causes devastation across the Cape - CapeTown ETC

Normal text sizeLarger text sizeVery large text size

The South China Sea is one of the world's most tense regions. But the entry of four Chinese coast guard vessels and 63 fishing boats into Indonesian waters in December, and again in January, still managed to shock and infuriate Indonesia.

The Chinese vessels were fishing in the Natuna Sea in part of Indonesia's exclusive economic zone. In response, the Indonesian government sent its own coast guard, navy, private fishing boats and even four F-16 fighter jets to repel them.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo inspects the navy ship KRI Usman Harun at Selat Lampa Port on the Natuna Islands in January 2020. Credit: AP

It was a reminder that fishing rights are a big part of what's at stake in the region not just territorial boundaries and access to oil and gas reserves.

The same pattern is playing out around the world, in waters from Africa to Antarctica. In some places, illegal fishing is happening on an industrial scale. In others, desperate fishermen are chasing species into their neighbours' patches of sea. In many cases, fishing is a proxy for deeper power plays.

An estimated 59 million people worked in fishing or aquaculture industries in 2016, and 85 per cent of those people were in Asia, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). There were an estimated 4.6 million fishing vessels globally, from huge trawlers to unpowered boats. Again, 75 per cent of those were from Asia.

Global fish production peaked at about 170 million tonnes in 2016, with about 90 million tonnes from caught fish (including from oceans and inland fishing). The caught fish figure has been relatively static since the mid-1980s, even as distant water fishing fishing within the maritime zones of other countries has taken off.

People all over the world are eating more fish. Between 1961 and 2015, in per capita terms, consumption grew from 9 kilograms a person to more than 20 kilograms. It now accounts for about 17 per cent of animal protein consumed globally.

A study in the journal Nature, by the Sea Around Us initiative,suggested the FAO had underestimated the "peak" global fish catch from the world's oceans. The figure was actually 130 million tonnes, it contended, not 86 million tonnes (in 1996).

But there has been a decline in ocean and inland fish catches, with a boom in aquaculture fish farming accounting for the growth in production. Even as the percentage of the world's oceans being fished has risen from 60 to 90 per cent, the actual catch has declined dramatically from 25 tonnes per 1000 kilometres travelled in the 1950s to 7 tonnes per 1000 kilometres, according to another study by the Sea Around Us.

That's not because fishing fleets or nations have become more ecologically conscious it's because there are fewer fish to catch.

There are multiple factors. In the South China Sea, the dispute over boundaries is a major contributor. In parts of Africa, although distant-water fishing fleets those that operate outside territorial waters, sometimes thousands of kilometres away may have permission to operate, some of them break the rules on their allotted catch. Local fishermen, too, at times resent the presence of competing foreigners.

Over-fishing and unregulated fishing, along with climate change, are the main threats to global fish stocks, says Associate Professor Quentin Hanichat the University of Wollongong.

Ocean acidification, increases in water temperature, the oxygenation of the water and the degradation of habitats (such as in the Great Barrier Reef) are all factors, says Hanich, who leads the Fisheries Governance Research Program at the Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security.

"There has to be a stronger focus on co-operation. Fish dont care about maritime boundaries," he says.

But the network of 17 Regional Fisheries Management Organisations (RFMOs) around the world, which attempts to manage and conserve fish stocks such as tuna on the high seas, is struggling. Membership is voluntary, enforcement is difficult and targeting illegal or unregulated fishing is problematic.

The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (1994) is the foundation for many of the rules now governing fishing globally, particularly with respect to how countries manage internal waters, territorial waters and exclusive economic zones.

A country's EEZ stretches about 370 kilometres from shore and grants sole exploitation rights of resources in that area.

Nations can set catch limits and sell the right to others to fish in their own EEZ. Australia did so with Japan until the 1990s. Some smaller states in the Pacific and parts of Africa do so today, as they do not have the resources to fish these areas themselves.

Overlapping claims to an EEZ in the South China Sea are at the heart of a big dispute among several countries.

Beyond countries' EEZs lie the high seas, where regional fisheries management organisations attempt to manage fish stocks in partnership with partner nations and distant water fishing nations.

In practice, the rules these organisations set such as one managing southern bluefin tuna, founded by Australia, Japan and New Zealand are binding only on voluntary member states.

The southern bluefin tuna is one of the rarest and most expensive tuna species and China, for example, is not a member of the commission that manages this fish.

Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing of southern bluefin is a major threat to this and other species.

Who owns what in the South China Sea is disputed among several countries. The disagreements include boundaries on fishing rights, so fishing activity is inherently tied to their geopolitical interests.

Hanich says the dispute is undermining the sustainable management of fishing in the region. "What we are seeing in these areas is over-fishing as claimant states cant agree on where the lines should be," he says.

The South China Sea accounted for 12 per cent of the global fish catch in 2015, though catch rates have declined by up to 75 per cent in the past 20 years, according to a report by Greg Poling, the director of the Washington-based Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative.

Fisheries in the region, Poling wrote, "teeter on the brink of collapse", while the Chinese government-subsidised fleet in the region serves two purposes: "Most of these vessels serve, at least part time, in Chinas maritime militia."

The conflict over fisheries is therefore driven by countries projecting power in their region (and indeed, all over the world in some cases, through distant water fleets) and not just access to food sources.

Southern bluefin tuna is farmed off South Australia. In waters elsewhere, the species is a prime target for illegal fishing. Credit:Getty Images

Either the geopolitics follows the fish, or vice versa, says Evan Laksmana, from Indonesia's Centre for Strategic and International Studies.

"From Jakarta and Beijing's point of view, the fisheries fight in the Natunas isnt about the fisheries, it's about broader issues. The fish follow the politics," Laksmana says.

It's about broader issues. The fish follow the politics.

"For Beijing, it's about making a statement. It's a way of signalling to Indonesia and other countries that their rights are there, you can't rely on international law."

For Indonesia, the recent showdown in the Natunas was shaped by domestic politics, which demands that Indonesia stand up to China.

The dispute won't be solved through military posturing, sending fishing boats to the region or diplomatic protests, Laksmana says. Co-operative agreements about fishing rights in the South China Sea offer the best way forward.

In such a vacuum of regulation, an RFMO could step in but there isn't such an organisation in the South China Sea, and the weakness of these groups has left the door open to conflict in other parts of the world.

"What needs to happen is the development of a co-operative mechanism. All the key states have to engage in the process ... but what we increasingly see are some states use their fishing vessels as a default for claiming rights or engaging in activities."

Distant water fishing (DWF) is commercial fishing that takes place outside sometimes thousands of kilometres a country's territorial waters. These large ships can stay at sea for months and are equipped with refrigeration and at-sea processing. Some of them participate in illegal fishing.

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that illegal fishing is responsible for the loss of between $10 billion and $23 billion worth of fish every year.

"The challenges that DWF fleets pose to coastal countries resources and the fishing industry, particularly the expanding Chinese fleet, will persist unless there is a significant global shift towards sustained fisheries management," the Stimson Centre, a Washington think-tank, said in a 2019 report.

China has the largest DWF fleet in the world at around 2500 vessels and about 38 per cent of the global fleet. Taiwan's fleet is second largest, with about 21.5 per cent of the global fleet. Japan, South Korea and Spain round out the top five, accounting for a further 30 per cent.

DWF is often subsidised by governments and sometimes operates without permission in other nations' exclusive economic zones.

Climate change is drawing some fish species to new waters because of temperature changes so the DWF fleets follow. That places increasing pressure on coastal fishing communities and local fish stocks, which can't compete against industrial-scale fishing operations.

The South China Sea is by no means the only global hotspot.

Illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing in distant waters takes place all over the world, driven by economics, politics and the need for more protein.

According to the Stimson Centre, the top five countries targeted by IUU are Kiribati, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Micronesia and Papua New Guinea.

While distant-water fleets are usually present as a result of deals with local governments, monitoring and enforcement is problematic for these tiny nations and it's likely that some IUU fishing also takes place.

On the west coast of Africa, Mauritania, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, the Congo and Angola are also in the global top 20 nations targeted by distant-water fleets.

Loading

Spain is by far the most active of the top five distant-water fishing nations on Africa's west coast, although China, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea also have a presence. Those four Asian nations are otherwise more active on the east coast of Africa: Seychelles, Mozambique, Madagascar and Mauritius, which are also in the top 20.

As the Stimson report notes, in Mozambique there is a "widespread belief that foreign fleets including those that operate under traditional access agreements or through charter and joint-venture partnerships are engaging in some level of IUU fishing".

In Mozambique, some locals view China's infrastructure investment as a trade-off for permission to exploit the country's natural resources.

In Antarctica, the amount of IUU fishing has been on the rise for the past decade. Australia and France are among the countries trying to combat this, while Russia and China have opposed the creation of new marine protected areas.

In Australia, the Department of Agriculture says that some IUU fishing takes place in our northern waters, largely by traditional or small fishing boats from south-east Asia and in the remote sub-Antarctic waters near Heard and McDonald Islands, about 4000 kilometres south-west of Perth.

There are tensions between China and Brazil over fishing rights in the southern Atlantic ocean. And in the Bay of Bengal, tensions between Sri Lanka and India are growing particularly in the Palk Bay. Overfishing in the region is contributing to a decline in fish stocks and so-called dead zones that have insufficient oxygen for fish to survive, and the Sri Lankan Navy has fired on Indian fishing vessels, according to a 2019 report on environmental security in the region.

In demand: krill, a tiny crustacean high in protein.Credit:Australian Antarctic Division

Professor Jessica Meeuwig, a marine ecologist from the University of Western Australia's Oceans Institute, says the contest is "fundamentally about food security".

"A very large proportion of the worlds population relies on seafood as a major part of their diet. So countries like China, with a very small exclusive economic zone, they look at increasing their access to fish populations," she says.

If individual countries don't begin to work together more co-operatively to tackle over-fishing and climate change the planet faces an existential threat to one of its major sources of protein.

And that's bad news for everyone.

James Massola is south-east Asia correspondent based in Jakarta. He was previously chief political correspondent, based in Canberra. He has been a Walkley and Quills finalist on three occasions, won a Kennedy Award for outstanding foreign correspondent and is the author of The Great Cave Rescue.

See original here:

Why are fish wars heating up all over the world? - Sydney Morning Herald

Tom Hanks has often found that the military or quasi-military uniform of a much-loved authority figure rather suits him: that sensitive, faintly rheumy gaze is often to be seen under a peaked cap or battered helmet. He was the container-ship captain in Paul Greengrasss Captain Phillips, the heroic airline pilot in Clint Eastwoods Sully, the teacher-turned-soldier in Spielbergs Saving Private Ryan. Now he is the US naval commander Ernest Krause in this robustly old-fashioned second world war adventure, in which Hanks also makes his screenwriting debut, adapting the 1955 novel, The Good Shepherd by CS Forester.

Hanks plays a captain during the Battle of the Atlantic who has finally been promoted. He has been given command of a destroyer with the call sign Greyhound and tasked with protecting vital supply convoys on their way from the US to Britain, through mountainous seas and surrounded by U-boats led by lethally cunning German sadists.

Having bade a rather formal farewell to his wife, Evie (a brief cameo for Elisabeth Shue), Ernest sets sail and quickly finds himself in terrifying danger. An early and flukey success against the enemy leads him to make miscalculations due to inexperience, and soon his convoy is attacked by a sinister wolf pack of vengeful U-boats, who start picking off ships, one by one, with terrifying precision. Their leader (voiced by Thomas Kretschmann) screeches Germany-calling-type taunts over the radio: Ve hear the screams of your comrades as zey die! You vill die today!

Hankss troubled captain is visibly tired and vulnerable, at one stage poignantly asking for his soft slippers to brought to him to soothe his aching feet. His subordinates, including Charlie Cole (Stephen Graham) have affection for their chief, but you can see a tiny flicker of dismay on their obedient faces. Has the old man got what it takes?

Easily the most startling moment comes with the captain making a mortifying mistake about the two galley stewards whose job it is serve him meals: Cleveland (Rob Morgan) and Pitts (Craig Tate) are the only black crew members. In his exhaustion and distraction, the captain calls one by the others name. This blunder is of course not presented as evidence of his callousness, still less of systemic racism, just the understandable lapse of a thoroughly decent guy under unimaginable pressure. Hanks is the only actor (and screenwriter) in Hollywood who could possibly have got away with this, although I cant see him or anyone else risking such a line right now.

Greyhound is a very traditional and indeed traditionalist movie, with Hanks beginning and ending his first day in battle kneeling in prayer. Yet the action itself sticks largely and somehow expressionistically to the tense, claustrophobic world of the bridge with the captain barking all manner of opaque naval jargon. In some ways it resembles a kind of ocean-going stage play: the other, distant ships and the vast heaving grey sea are rendered digitally. But its effective and watchable, with some genuinely tense moments as Hanks has to make split-second decisions about two Nazi torpedoes heading his way from different directions, and then desperately bellow his orders over the wind and rain. He is very much the sort of mythical figure that Walter Mitty might imagine himself being.

Im also a sucker for some old-school cat-and-mouse strategy between allied ships and German U-boats and this doesnt disappoint. There are moments with Hanks looking urgently into the distance through his captains binoculars, which reminded me of Jack Hawkins in The Cruel Sea.

Death is the most difficult thing to represent in a war movie, or any movie. Three sailors are killed in battle, and Hanks and director Aaron Schneider contrive a burial-at-sea sequence halfway through, which is notable for one tiny touch of what might be called mythic insubordination. Just as a shrouded body is about to be solemnly dropped from its flag-wrapping over the side into the sea, it gets tangled. We get an infinitesimal cutaway to Hankss alarmed face: is this sad moment going to turn into farce? But in the next moment, the problem is righted and the ceremony goes ahead.

Another sort of movie might have put far more emphasis on things like this. As well as death and tragedy, war is full of absurdity, indignity, chaos, all sorts of bizarre and embarrassing things that dont get mentioned in the official record. Greyhound is content with its keynote of sombre reverence.

Greyhound is available on Apple TV from 10 July.

This article was amended on 12 July 2020 to correct the spelling of Elisabeth Shue.

More here:

Greyhound review Tom Hanks goes to war on the high seas - The Guardian

Monday, July 13, 2020 1:03 a.m. EDT by Thomson Reuters

By Jonathan Saul and Matt Spetalnick

LONDON/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Several companies that certify vessels are seaworthy and ship insurers have withdrawn services to tankers involved in the Venezuelan oil trade as the United States targets the maritime industry to tighten sanctions on the Latin American country.

U.S. sanctions have driven Venezuela's oil exports to their lowest levels in nearly 80 years, starving President Nicolas Maduro's socialist government of its main source of revenue and leaving authorities short of cash for essential imports such as food and medicine.

The sanctions are part of U.S. efforts to weaken Maduro's grip on power after Washington and other Western democracies accused him of rigging a 2018 re-election vote. Despite the country's economic collapse, Maduro has held on and frustrated the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump.

Maduro's government says the United States is trying to seize Venezuela's oil and calls the U.S. measures illegal persecution that heap suffering on the Venezuelan people.

Washington has honed in on the maritime industry in recent months in efforts to better enforce sanctions on the oil trade and isolate Caracas, Washington's special envoy on Venezuela Elliott Abrams told Reuters.

"What you will see is most shipowners and insurance and captains are simply going to turn away from Venezuela," Abrams told Reuters in an interview.

"It's just not worth the hassle or the risk for them."

The United States is pressuring shipping companies, insurers, certifiers and flag states that register vessels, he said.

Ship classification societies, which certify safety and environmental standards for vessels, are feeling the heat for the first time.

The United States is pressuring classifiers to establish whether vessels have violated sanctions regulations and to withdraw certification if so as a way to tighten sanctions further, a U.S. official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Without certification, a vessel and its cargo become uninsured. Ship owners would also be in breach of commercial contracts which require certificates to be maintained. In addition, port authorities can refuse entry or detain a ship.

London-headquartered Lloyd's Register (LR), one of the world's leading ship classifiers, said it had withdrawn services from eight tankers that were involved in trade with Venezuela.

"In accordance with our programme for complying with sanctions' laws, where we become aware of vessels operating in breach of relevant sanctions laws, LR classification has been withdrawn," a Lloyd's Register spokeswoman said.

Abrams said the pressure on the maritime industry was working.

"We have had a number of shippers that come to us and say, 'We just had our insurance company withdraw the insurance, and the ship is on the high seas and we've got to get to port. Could you give us a license for one week?'," Abrams said.

In June, the United States designated six shipping companies - two of them based in Greece - and six tankers they owned for participating in proscribed Venezuelan trade.

Another leading ship classifier, Hamburg-headquartered DNV GL Maritime, said it had suspended services for three of those vessels in June.

The company resumed services when the United States removed those vessels from the list of sanctioned entities after the shipping companies that own and operate the vessels agreed to cease trade with Venezuela.

CHILLING EFFECT

The United States has threatened sanctions on any company involved in the oil trade with Venezuela, and that has had a chilling effect even on trade permitted under sanctions.

Some oil companies are refusing to charter vessels that have called at Venezuelan ports in the past year, even if the voyage was exempt from sanctions.

"The shipping sector has been at the receiving end of U.S. action on Venezuela and it has caused much uncertainty as no one knows who will be next," one shipping industry source said.

Insurers are also in a bind. They have been conservative in their interpretation of U.S. sanctions to avoid any potential violations, said Mike Salthouse, chairman of the sanctions sub-committee with the International Group association. The group represents companies that insure about 90% of the world's commercial shipping.

"If there is ambiguity as to what is lawful and what is unlawful it makes it almost impossible for an insurer to say whether someone has cover or not," he said.

Even after ships and companies are removed from the sanctions list, they may face difficulties, Salthouse said.

"The stigma associated with a designation may last some time," he said.

Oil majors, for example, may review relationships with companies that own or manage vessels that the United States had designated and then removed to avoid any possible problems with other vessels, he said.

'REAL THREAT'

Venezuela is on the list of high risk areas set by officials from London's insurance market.

"If a vessel sails to Venezuela they have to notify the underwriter and it may be that the underwriter will not be able to cover them," said Neil Roberts, head of marine underwriting at Lloyd's Market Association, which represents the interests of all underwriting businesses in London's Lloyd's market.

The industry faces "the direct and real threat of having its trade stopped by a watchful U.S. administration because of an inadvertent infringement," he said.

"This risk alone is enough to fuel the multiplication of compliance checks."

Some of the biggest global flag registries including Panama and Liberia are also looking more closely at ships that were involved in Venezuela trading as they come under U.S. pressure to withdraw registration for ships violating sanctions.

Maritime lawyers in Panama said its registry is fining vessels that do not comply with the U.S. maritime guidance issued in May. The registry is mostly de-flagging vessels targeted by multilateral sanctions rather than unilateral U.S. sanctions, the lawyers said.

Officials at Liberia's registry did not respond to requests for comment.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, a former investor in shipping, helped craft the strategy targeting the maritime sector, sources said.

A Commerce Department spokesperson acknowledged Ross had worked with other government agencies "to determine how to best hold accountable those who are evading U.S. sanctions" on Venezuela.

Abrams vowed to keep up the pressure.

"There are people who don't cooperate ... We'll go after the ship, the ship owner, the ship captain."

(Additional reporting by Marianna Parraga in Mexico City and Elida Moreno in Panama City; Editing by Simon Webb and Daniel Wallis)

See the rest here:

Exclusive: U.S. turns screws on maritime industry to cut off Venezuela's oil - WTVB News

There has been drama on the high seas on James Packer's yacht IJE.

Confidential can reveal two of the billionaire's guests have separated and are getting divorced after a blow up on board the luxury cruiser.

Hollywood producer Adam Schroeder and Australian musician and songwriter James Maas were among Packer's inner-circle when they fell out on the three week trip off the coast of Mexico.

Tensions have long been high between Schroeder and Maas, who have been married for seven years.

It is understood the situation came to a head when Schroeder cut up Maas' clothes and threw them overboard, along with other personal effects.

The couple stayed in separate rooms for the next week. The American producer, behind films including Clueless, Zoolander, Sleepy Hollow, Shaft, The Truman Show and First Wives Club, is understood to have disembarked in the sea port of La Paz.

"It was all pretty ugly and awkward," said a source. "James (Maas) was mortified at the scene in front of everyone."

Maas, who is close friends with both Packer and his ex wife Jodhi Meares, flew home to Los Angeles four days later on the billionaire's private jet.

Packer is now on the boat with his ex-wife, Erika Packer and their three children, Indigo, Jackson and Emmanuelle, after whom the $200 million 354-Foot Benetti Gigayacht is named.

The boat boasts 11 cabins and is five stories high with its own heated swimming pool, cinema, sauna, driving range and gym.

James Maas and his husband Adam Schroeder. Picture: Instagram

Maas with Packer on the IJE. Picture: Backgrid

Others to have been on the yacht over recent weeks include Packer's best mate, Ben Tilley.

Maas, 32, who grew up in Sydney's northern beaches, moved to Los Angeles nine years ago and was introduced to Schroeder through friends.

The Australian would not comment when contacted by The Daily Telegraph yesterday.

He and Packer have known each other for many years given Maas is close with Meares and are understood to have grown into their friendship over the past year.

Maas has also been seen holidaying in Aspen, Colorado, with Packer and his girlfriend Kylie Lim.

They have been photographed hanging out a number of times.

It was Maas who flew to Hawaii to be with Meares when she split from ex boyfriend, rocker Jon Stevens, back in 2015.

Maas was well connected when he lived in Sydney, and is understood to be friends with Alan Jones, Kyle Sandilands, John Ibrahim and Delta Goodrem.

Originally published as James Packer caught in the middle of high seas drama

Continued here:

James Packer caught in the middle of high seas drama - Chronicle

IN light of yesterdays (Wednesday) weather warning from the South African Weather Service, the NSRI urges the public to be cautious at the coast in the coming days.

High, rough seas and gale-force winds have been forecast.

ALSO READ: Severe weather warning issued

This severe weather could lead to localised flooding and storm surges, which are some of the winter weather phenomena set to accompany cold fronts that are due to hit the Western Cape today.

High seas could result in damage to coastal infrastructure and coastal erosion, as well as disruptions to port and small harbour activities.

With storms and high seas predicted along coastal regions, our concern is for smaller vessels at sea which may have difficulty navigating through the conditions, said NSRI CEO, Dr Cleeve Robertson.

We also appeal to boaters, paddlers, beach-goers, surfers, coastal hikers, anglers and the general public to be cautious around the coastline, and to follow weather forecasts.

0357727286

0357727286

0357727286

Beach-goers and coastal hikers should steer clear of the coastline, as dangerous waves or surges may catch them off-guard and sweep them off the rocks along the shoreline.

Sea-going craft are encouraged to download the free NSRI Safe Trax app by visiting https://www.nsri.org.za/safetrx/

HAVE YOUR SAY

Like ourFacebook pageand follow us onTwitter.

For news straight to your phone invite us:

WhatsApp 072 069 4169

Instagramzululand_observer

The rest is here:

Sea Rescue warns of rough seas - Zululand Observer

Tom Hanks World War II naval thriller Greyhound has navigated turbulent skies and dealt with derailments before finally parking its wheels on Apple TV+. As is the case with many planned theatrical films in 2020, the movie rocketed past a couple release dates due to shutdowns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, forcing Sony to settle for a streaming release. Thats something its high-profile all-American star who famously endured a bout with the virus in March along with his wife, Rita Hanks lamented due to its big-screen audio-visual ambition. But maybe itll still be worth a watch on our smallish screens.

The Gist: TOO MANY SUBTITLES: TIMES, DATES, PLACES, ETC. Ill simplify: After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, forcing America into WWII, the U.S. Navy began assisting Britain in its conflict with Nazi Germany. Feb., 1942: Capt. Krause (Hanks) finally gets an opportunity to commandeer his own destroyer, the Greyhound, which will traverse the North Atlantic, running point on a convoy of 37 ships stocked with troops and supplies. The journey includes a harrowing two-day stretch in the middle of the ocean thats too far out from either side for air support. They call this maritime no-mans-land the Black Pit yipes because its the perfect place for wolfpacks of German U-boats, or submarines, to pick off ships with torpedoes.

So our captain has his work cut out for him. Two months earlier, which would be after Pearl Harbor: Prior to his departure, he meets to exchange Christmas gifts with his lady, Evelyn (Elisabeth Shue). He gives her a star ornament. She gives him monogrammed slippers. He says they should get married. She says shed rather wait until after the war, the implication being, she doesnt want to be a widow too soon. Grim. But they arent spring chickens. They know what theyre dealing with. These are handsome people, but they wear reality on their faces.

Back to the high seas: Kearse says bye-bye to the airplanes and keeps heading due east. A few beats later, the radar pings. U-boat. Bearing down. Orders are barked. Grease pencils scribble across glass. Switches are flipped. Knobs are twisted. Someone please fetch the captains sheepskin coat. Sonar? Sonar. Coordinates are passed on. Comms are commd. Maneuvers become evasive. Guns are fired. They got em. The mates cheer. But the captain just looks sad. Souls, lost. Will he finally eat something? He pauses to pray over a slab of ham and a cup of coffee. A silent moment. Its just begun. There are more Nazis in this pack. And theres still an hour of movie left.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Greyhound features a decent fraction of the Hanks performance in Captain Phillips and the hemmed-in qualities of a sturdy submarine thriller a la U-571 or The Hunt for Red October.

Performance Worth Watching: If youre not watching Tom Hanks in a Tom Hanks movie, then it probably has Streep, Denzel or DiCaprio in it.

Memorable Dialogue: Tom Hanks-as-a-Navy-captain is always, always polite, even when dictating a message to a flunky about his intent to blast a Nazi sub to hell:

Kearse: Ill escort to comm convoy, well run it down.

Flunky: Ill escort to comm convoy, well run it down.

Kearse: Wait, wait well run it down thank you.

Flunky: Well run it down thank you. Aye aye, sir.

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: My dad would love Greyhound. Hey Dad, you should watch it. Its a tight, exciting war movie, and Tom Hanks is in it. Im sorry its only on Apple TV+.

I picture Hanks banging out the screenplay on a vintage typewriter clack clack clack ding! KACHUNK so he can chatter procedural dialogue that might be dead-eye accurate or Hollywood hooey who but a seaman can tell but is nonetheless convincing. The relatively brief pauses between torpedoes and orders pertaining to starboard rudders or whatever allow him to develop Kearse as a man of great duty, faith and honor, a man willing to do what he must, but never exalting in the loss of life, even when its faceless fascist stooges taunting him over radio transmissions. His men respect him so much, they immediately apologize when they curse.

In his captains hat, sheepskin jacket and monogrammed slippers, Kearse is a good man, and Hanks, who has played Capt. Sully, Capt. Phillips, Capt. Miller and Mr. Rogers, is good at playing good men.

In the midst of a long, dark night of death and destruction, Schneider guides the camera up, over the melee, above the clouds to the electric-green waves of aurora borealis. Is this the puppeteer hand of Kearses god hovering overhead, or a profound but cold display of unfeeling beauty? Interpret away. Perhaps its destiny at work, and destiny in movies like Greyhound is so often just.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Greyhound ultimately is Minor Tom Hanks, but he still lends a modicum of depth to a gripping adventure.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream Greyhound on Apple TV+

See the rest here:

Stream It Or Skip It: 'Greyhound' on Apple TV+, an Old-Fashioned Tom Hanks World War II Thriller - Decider

For Mick Baron, the giant kelp forests of Tasmania were a playground, a school and a church. The former marine biologist runs a scuba-diving center on the Australian islands east coast, and rhapsodizes about the wonders of the seaweeds dense habitats. Diving in kelp is one of the most amazing underwater experiences you can have, the 65-year-old says, likening it to flying through the canopy of a terrestrial rain forest. You wont find a single empty patch in a kelp forest From the sponge gardens on the seafloor all the way up to the leaves on the surface, its packed with life.

Or rather, it was. In late 2015, a marine heat wave hit eastern Australia, wiping out a third of the Great Barrier Reef, and the kelp forests Baron had been exploring for most of his life. We were diving in a nice thick forest in December, says Baron. By end of March, it looked like an asphalt driveway. Recurring heat waves have prevented kelp and coral from recovering; marine temperatures on Australias east coast are on average 2C higher than a century ago, an increase scientists attribute to rising greenhouse-gas emissions. The ocean is deceptively fragile, says Baron. Two degrees doesnt sound like much, but not many species can handle that kind of temperature change.

Baron, a gregarious, bearded and perennially sunburned Australian, introduced generations of divers to Tasmanias kelp cathedrals. His own grandchildren, he says, will have to learn about them from his YouTube videos. Nearly 95% of eastern Tasmanias kelp forests are gone, a preview of what is to come for the ocean as a whole. Tasmanias kelp forests are the poster child for what climate change means for our oceans, he says. What is happening here is what will happen everywhere else in a decade or two.

Human beings owe their life to the sea. Four in 10 humans rely on the ocean for food. Marine life produces 70% of our oxygen; 90% of global goods travel via shipping lanes. We turn to the sea for solaceocean-based tourism in the U.S. alone is worth $124 billion a yearand medical advancement. An enzyme used for COVID-19 testing was originally sourced from bacteria found in the oceans hydro-thermal vents. The ocean also acts as a giant planetary air conditioner. Over the past century, the ocean has absorbed 93% of the heat trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse-gas emissions. If all that heat hadnt been taken up by the ocean, wed all be living in Death Valley conditions by now, says marine-conservation biologist Callum Roberts at the U.K.s University of York.

But we humans have also been squeezing life out of the sea. Increased CO levels in the atmosphere have made the ocean more acidic, threatening food chains. Warming waters are not only killing sea life, they are also changing currents and affecting global weather patterns. Meanwhile we dump 8 million tons of waste into the ocean a year, in addition to agricultural and industrial runoff that poisons coastal areas. At the rate we are harvesting fish, by 2050 there will likely be more plastic than fish in the oceans. A 2019 report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that without profound economic and institutional transformations, there would be irreversible damage to oceans and sea ice.

This was supposed to be the year those transformations began. A series of international policy meetings in 2020 was meant to set global targets for managing fish populations, restoring biodiversity and controlling pollution. As it did with so much this year, the coronavirus pandemic put those talks on hold. Nonetheless, environmentalists, scientists, policymakers and ocean advocates are working desperately to keep the momentum going, aware that this might be the last, best chance they have to reverse the tide. Whats the phrase? Never let a good crisis go to waste? As we restart the economy, this is the chance to reset our goals for a healthy ocean, says Carlos M. Duarte, a Spanish marine biologist at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia. We have a very narrow window of opportunity where we can actually still be effective. Twenty years from now, it will be too late.

Vibrant coral off the coast of Papua New Guinea, which is noted for its extraordinary biodiversity of coral reefs.

Courtesy of Chris LeidyAssouline

Duarte and Roberts have co-written a sweeping new study published in the journal Nature that offers a blueprint for how the ocean might be restored within a generation. The proposed measures would cost billions of dollars a year, but the return on investment would be 10 times as high in increased biodiversity, fish stocks, jobs and tourism revenue, says Roberts. We have seen over and over again that given a chance, ocean life can come back. We just have to be willing to give it time to heal.

A revitalized ocean would not only feed a growing population but could also strengthen our fight against climate change. Coastal habitats such as mangroves and salt marshes are extraordinary carbon sinks, sequestering as much CO per acre as 16 acres of pristine Amazonian rain forest. New developments in offshore wind-farm technology can provide an inexhaustible supply of green energy, while mineral deposits on the seafloor, if mined sustainably, offer the raw ingredients for the batteries to store it. Its time to stop thinking of the ocean as a victim of climate change and start thinking of it as a powerful part of the solution, says Jane Lubchenco, a marine ecologist who served as head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) under President Barack Obama.

When the coronavirus pandemic forced the global economy into a state of suspended animation, carbon emissions slowed, shipping idled, and fisheries closed. The ocean was allowed a moment to breathe. The pause was short-lived, of course, and the economic cost potentially catastrophic. But, like the once unimaginable sight of blue skies over industrial areas, it offered a reminder that change is within our grasp. The coronavirus crisis has shown us when there is a threat to the global population, there is a willingness to act collectively to limit that threat, says Roberts. The tough lessons of COVID-19 may yet translate into a stronger understanding of the inter-connectedness of our personal and planetary healthand a demand for action.

The stakes for ocean health have never been higher. The dying kelp and disappearing coral reefs should be sounding an urgent alarm, says Christopher Trisos, a senior researcher at the African Climate and Development Initiative at the University of Cape Town who focuses on the inter-section of climate change, biodiversity and human well-being. Bio-diversity loss from climate change looks like a trickle right now, but it could become a flood very quickly, he says. Even greater catastrophic multi-species die-offs could begin within the decade, Trisos predicts, starting with tropical oceans and spreading to tropical forests and temperate ecosystems by the 2050s.

Coastal nations would be first and hardest hit, with devastating consequences for the billions of people who depend on these ecosystems for their livelihoods and nutrition. We fish on coral reefs. We depend on ecotourism. We rely on healthy [kelp] forests for carbon storage and water filtration, Trisos says. If there is a sudden collapse of these ecosystems in a single decade, we could lose these services. Income is at risk. Food security is at risk.

But there are ways of preserving the ecosystems many nations depend upon. Spanish-American marine ecologist and conservationist Enric Sala has spent the past 12 years surveying and documenting the oceans last wilderness areas as a National Geographic explorer in residence. Through his Pristine Seas project, he has rallied governments to set aside 5.7 million sq km of coastline and ocean as marine parks where fishing, dumping, mining and other destructive industries are prohibited. The results, he says, have been astonishing. Even over a short time frame, he has watched depleted fish populations grow sixfold, kelp flourish and coral reefs bloom. Given the chance, he says, the ocean has an extraordinary ability to regenerate. I have seen miracles on the water. The ocean is sending us a very clear message: if you just give me some space, look what I can do.

A sea turtle surveys the reefs surrounding the Gili Islands inIndonesia.

Courtesy of Chris LeidyAssouline

So far, says Sala, only 2.5% of the ocean enjoys the full protection it needs to do so. He has backed a global call to set aside a third of the ocean in similarly protected areas by 2030. These marine protected areas arent just about turning back the clock. They are a bulwark against future stresses, a kind of immunity booster for the sea that enables it to deal with threats like acidification and plastic pollution. Not only is it necessary from a perspective of trying to undo some of the harm that we have done to the ocean over time, says Roberts, but its absolutely vital that we give it the resilience it needs to cope with whats coming down the pike.

Not many fishermen, or fishing nations for that matter, are likely to embrace the idea of fencing off a third of the worlds oceans. But the industry is on the brink of fishing itself out of business. The U.N.s Food and Agriculture Organization, which monitors the state of global fish stocks, rates 33% of species as overfished, and an additional 60% as fished to their full potential. Yet the FAO also estimates that a growing global human population, slated to hit 10 billion by 2050, will require 70% more food than the planet can currently provide. The ocean can help make up the shortfall, if fish stocks are managed better now, says Lubchenco, the former head of NOAA, who is now a professor of marine biology at Oregon State University. Counter-intuitively, that means the more fish in protected areas, the better off we will be in the long run.

For those who fish, says Sala, marine protected areas act a little like a savings account where fish can be set aside to grow and reproduce like compound interest. The larger your principal, the larger the returns. The more fish in the reserve, the greater the reproductive output. And the only way to get the large principal is to have fully protected areas. When that bounty spills out of the sanctuaries, which it often does, the fish are fair game for industry. Its like living on interest.

The fishing industry, at least in some areas, is starting to come around. Given the speed at which marine species and habitats are declining, theres a growing consensus that this requires an urgent and a globally coordinated response in improved ocean management, says Runa Haug Khoury, director for sustainability at Norways Aker BioMarine, the largest krill-fishing company in the world. For responsible fishery players, marine protected areas are not an enemy, they are a helping hand.

Effectively roping off one-third of the worlds oceans will require an unprecedented level of global cooperation. Many countries, including the U.S. and the U.K., have committed to expand protections in their own territorial waters. But these pledges, even while being one of the biggest conservation efforts in history, cover a combined total of less than 10% of ocean areas. The higher goal can be reached only by establishing protected areas in the high seas, which are open to all nations and will require a broad consensus. Negotiations to forge a U.N. treaty for the oceans had been scheduled for March 2020 but were postponed because of the coronavirus.

Protecting areas of the high seas, which account for 60% of the oceans, wont be an easy undertaking. For proof, you need only look south to the seas surrounding Antarctica, home to some of the most rare, vulnerable and critical eco-systems in the world. Cold-water currents spiraling away from the continent push the regions nutrient-rich waters across the planet, pumping life into coastal fisheries even north of the equator.

About half the worlds shallow coral reefs, like the one below in Papua New Guinea, have already vanished.

Courtesy of Chris LeidyAssouline

Rising temperatures threaten this precarious environment. In January, a team of scientists with New Yorks Stony Brook University conducted a census of chinstrap penguins on the rocky islands and rugged shores of the Antarctic peninsula, braving pounding surf, howling winds and piles of knee-deep guano to count nesting birds by hand. These birds feed exclusively on krill, the tiny shrimp-like creatures that form the backbone of the entire ocean food chain, and their condition gives a picture of the overall health of the region. They are the canaries in the Southern Oceans coal mine, and they are starting to disappear.

The researchers found that most colonies they surveyed had declined over the past 50 years, some by half and others up to 77%. This big of a drop means that there is something broken in the Southern Ocean, said ornithologist Noah Strycker, as he paused to watch a pair of fluffy gray chicks waddle through his survey site on Snow Island. Climate change is potentially driving shifts in krill populations, and then thats rippling its way up the food web and affecting the penguins.

The continent of Antarctica is protected from exploitation by international agreement, but the waters around it are not. The Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), a body made up of 25 countries and the European Union, committed in 2009 to establish a network of nine large-scale marine protected areas around the continent. The one in the Ross Sea, twice the area of Texas, is the largest such region in the world.

Yet a decade later, only this and one other have been implemented. Three others, proposed by the E.U., Argentina, Chile and Australia, have been blocked by Russia and China, which are intent on expanding their regional fishing operations. China doesnt want restriction on access to resources anywhere, says Rodolfo Werner, an Argentine conservationist who has served as an adviser to CCAMLRs scientific committee for the past 17 years. Setting up a [marine protected area] in Antarctica sets a precedent that could be replicated elsewhere on the high seas, and [China sees] that as a threat to [its] sovereignty.

The coronavirus pandemic has only elevated geopolitical tensions, especially between the U.S. and China. But environmental activists point to the fact that the Antarctic Treaty of 1959, which defines and protects the continent as a natural reserve, devoted to peace and science, was signed by 12 countries including the U.S. and the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War.

Roberts, whose paper for Nature calls for 30% of the worlds oceans to be kept aside to recover from overfishing and exploitation, believes that the pandemic might yet clarify minds. If theres a lesson from the coronavirus crisis, its that global problems need global solutions, he says. Hopefully the outliers will be more open to that message in the coming years, moving toward greater international cooperation and agreement when it comes to the things that are vital to our existence here on earth.

A redfish navigates through a colony of seapen near Raja Ampat, Indonesia.

Courtesy of Chris LeidyAssouline

An international agreement to protect the oceans would be a huge stepbut it is only one tool, and an expensive one. No amount of protection can block pollution or plastic debris, or reduce temperatures. Establishing marine protected areas is like taking an aspirin for brain cancer, says Camilo Mora, a reef-ecology scientist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. You think its working because the headache goes away, but the tumor is still growing. Unless we cut greenhouse-gas emissions, the threat remains.

The key to reducing emissions may also lie within the oceans, according to Lubchenco, who has been studying the impact of global warming on ocean ecology for decades. In 2009, she memorably demonstrated to the U.S. Congress the dangers of increasing ocean acidification by submerging chalk, representing the calcium carbonate component of most sea creatures shells, into solutions of water, water mixed with vinegar, and pure vinegar. In plain water, nothing happened. In the half-and-half solution it started to break down. In vinegar, it dissolved within minutes. She is still using solutions to make a point, having recently co-authored a study that calls itself a to-do list for reducing emissions currently produced through human use of the ocean. The shipping industry can be decarbonized through the use of hybrid battery technology. If offshore wind power could be harnessed from floating platforms in the deep sea as well as from fixed turbines in shallow water, as new prototypes promise, the industry could supply the equivalent of 11 times todays global demand for electricity, according to the International Energy Agency. Wetlands, mangroves and seagrass meadows are important carbon sinks, she says, and should be protected and restored.

Most vital would be changing the human diet. If sustainable aquaculture and mariculture methods (farming seaweed for consumption by both humans and livestock) were implemented, the ocean could supply six times more food than it does today, Lubchenco says, representing two-thirds of the animal protein that the FAO estimates will be needed to feed the global population in 2050. Because cattle in particular are so carbon intensive [the beef industry accounts for 6% of global emissions], switching from meat to sustainably farmed fish would make a significant impact.

Added all together, the papers authors conclude, the ocean could provide as much as one-fifth of the carbon-emission reductions needed to limit global warming to 1.5C by the end of the century. Thats just a very specific example of how the ocean has been out of sight, out of mind, and whoa, here, look, there is huge potential we hadnt been paying attention to, Lubchenco says.

Marine protected areas offer shelter to animals like this humpback whale near the eastern Solomon Islands.

Courtesy of Chris LeidyAssouline

But the balance between sustainable use and conservation of the oceans is delicate, and sometimes fraught with complications. Deep-sea mining in the Pacific Ocean, for example, could yield massive increases in cobalt, nickel, copper and other materials essential to meet the demand for clean-energy technologies and batteries. The U.N.s International Seabed Authority is expected this year to codify environmental-protection codes before allocating permits for the extraction of so-called polymetallic nodules. But environmentalists and marine biologists are calling for a moratorium on permits until more research has been done on these deposits and their role in the ecosystem. The mining industry is asking them to look at the bigger picture. There is a single deposit on the seafloor that can provide the minerals we need for a clean-energy transition, which will slow ocean acidificationthe biggest negative contribution to ocean health, says Kris Van Nijen, managing director of Belgium-based Global Sea Mineral Resources, one of the companies vying for a permit. Yes, it is an extractive industry, and yes, it is going to come with some impacts, but solutions to combat climate change will not fall from the sky. Its all about trade-offs.

The trade-offs work in both directions. If the ocean is to also become humanitys partner in combatting the twin challenges of climate change and a growing population, the era of limitless exploitation must come to an endand soon. The ocean does not live on a human timescale. Actions taken now will take decades to bear fruit, yet if nothing is done, the repercussions will be swift. This year, the pandemic forced a pause in the negotiations that were to decide the oceans fate. It also offers an opportunity to consider what the ocean means to us.

For far too long we have viewed the ocean, with its incomprehensible vastness, as a source of infinite bounty and too big to fail. Then, when the oceanrobbed of its fish, sickened by plastic and poisoned by pollutionstarted to decline, the problem seemed too big to fix. But ours is an ocean planet, and without it we wont survive. The truth may be dawning that the ocean, as Lubchenco puts it, is too big to ignore. With reporting by MADELINE ROACHE/LONDON

The accompanying photographs by Chris Leidy appear in the recently published book The Coral Triangle (Assouline)

Thank you! For your security, we've sent a confirmation email to the address you entered. Click the link to confirm your subscription and begin receiving our newsletters. If you don't get the confirmation within 10 minutes, please check your spam folder.

Contact us at editors@time.com.

Originally posted here:

Why We Need to Focus on Saving the Oceans This Year - TIME

Denia Marina is a true jewel in the towns crown offering something for everyone.

AFTER months of closure due to the coronavirus crisis, the marina is back in business, with all safety measures in place and is already buzzing with activity.

With incredible views of the Mediterranean and Denia castle, the recreational and tourist marina is not just a boat, syperyacht and water sport haven, it also boasts an array of fantastic restaurants, tapas bars and shops.

The water sports centre, managed by Club Nutico and the Denia Marina, is renowned for its comprehensive programme of summer activities, from kids camps with English-speaking teachers, surfing and paddle surfing lessons to Hawaiian canoe classes and full moon paddle yoga.

And with a temperate climate all year round, the harbour is well protected from any high seas.

Offering an enviable range of services to both visitors and vessels, the marina is a maritime link between the Spanish peninsula and the Balearic Islands, just 45km from Ibiza.

It has also organised and hosted Denia Boat Show since 2007, a trade event featuring exhibitors from leading boat manufacturers worldwide, presenting the latest products on the market.

There are actually four marinas inside the port of Denia. While three are dedicated to smaller yachts and boats, Port Denia Superyacht Marina, is specifically dedicated to superyachts and located in the town centre, opposite the shipyard.

The sheer number of yachts berthed in Denia creates a busy, fun ambience all year round, where locals, yachties and expats alike mix in the numerous places to be seen.

Go here to see the original:

Denia Marina a jewel in the towns crown - Euro Weekly News

The most conspicuous expulsion of water in Waterworld is not the urine Kevin Costners gilled warrior guzzles during what is, incredibly, the films opening scene. Its the jaunty, taunting flume he spits directly at Entertainment Weekly readers from the cover of the magazines most recent issue prior to release. Instead of a cute rebuke to the tsunami of toxic press swirling around the film throughout every stage of its productionnot to mention the literal tsunami that at one point sank its floating setthe image seemed aimed at potential viewers. Costner appeared to be daring them not to go see the movie he had banked his entire reputation on.

It was a dare only too many were willing to take. Just not as many as one might think.

Although Waterworld, which turns 25 on July 28, is often referred to as one of cinemas most notorious flops, that description isnt even close to accurate. Not only is Waterworld not a historic flop, its not a flop at all.

It is, however, the movie that changed the meaning of what is and isnt a flop, and in doing so set the stage for a film era where perception is everything.

Not that Waterworld isnt notorious.

Its one of those movies where the story behind the movie is vastly more dramatic and entertaining than the movie itself, and thus superior. Then-unknown costar Jack Black once described the script as like a wetRoad Warrior, which is more accurate than he may have realized.

The idea for what became Waterworld was conceived in 1986 when schlock-jockey Roger Cormans production company sought to produce a Mad Max ripoff in its own eminently imitable style. Aspiring young director Peter Rader had a chance to pitch on the project, and decided to distinguish his film from the burgeoning pack of Mad Max ripoffs by setting it on water. Cormans crew laughed Rader out of the buildingwhy, a film like that would require a budget of at least $5 million!but he wrote the screenplay anyway.

It was a sci-fi epic with a sociopolitical undercurrent. The film would be set in the year 2500, long after global warming had melted the polar ice caps, turning the whole planet into some kind of Aquaworld, where dry land is but a myth sold by dirt merchants. A mysterious young girl has what may be a map to that mythical dry land tattooed on her back, and a mutated fish-man must guard her from a floating fleet of sea-bikers. High-seas adventure ensues.

Rader sold his screenplay in 1989, at which point it bounced around Hollywood for a few years until Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves duo Kevin Costner and director Kevin Reynolds separately expressed interest. The two creatives, who had a major falling out during post-production on Prince of Thieves, begrudgingly agreed to re-team, and rounded out their film with the extremely 1995 casting of Basic Instincts Jeanne Tripplehorn, a Speed-resurgent Dennis Hopper, and future Napoleon Dynamite costar Tina Majorino.

In the summer of 1993, a crew of 500-plus people began building Waterworlds sets, kicking off what designer Dennis Gassner later called 18 months of hell.

There is no way to overstate how troubled a production Waterworld ended up, as voraciously reported by the entertainment press. Much has been said about the budgetwhich started off at $100 million, and topped out at a then-record $175 millionas well as the marathon shooting schedule, which started at 96 days and ballooned to 166. But really, the production encompassed every flavor of the disaster rainbow. Nearly everyone suffered frequent seasickness, or some other malady. At one point, medics were treating 40 or 50 cast- and crew-members per day. Majorino, only ten years old at the time, got stung by jellyfish so often that Costner nicknamed her jellyfish candy. (He didnt come up with any cute nicknames, however, for his stunt double, who nearly died from an embolism after surfacing too quickly from a deep-sea dive.)

Hurricane season weather around the Hawaiian location eventually sank a $5 million floating set, while local vendors reportedly price-gouged much of the equipment. Finally, over the course of this horrendous process, Costner endured both a divorce from his wife of 16 years, and a second falling out with director Reynolds, who left the project during the editing stage. By that time, the press had already dubbed the film Fishtar and Kevins Gate, references to earlier bombs, Ishtar and Heavens Gate, the latter of which was long thought to have bankrupted an entire movie studio.

Waterworld hadnt even come out yet, but already a narrative coalesced around its inevitable failure. Schadenfreude consumed the general moviegoing public. Unlike the historic bombs Waterworld was nicknamed after, the films slow journey to the big screen was like a public shame-parade. It was the popcorn-worthy event the film itself wanted to be. Everyday folks who didnt read trade mags like Variety observed the protracted spectacle the way they had O.J.s white Bronco chase the previous summer. They couldnt look away from the predestined trainwreck-to-be.

It was at this point, just before the release date, that Costner appeared on the cover of Entertainment Weekly spitting water at anyone who dared doubt his faith in the project.

But Costner seemed to know something that very few others did: Waterworld was no failure.

The reviews landed on the upper register of mixed, with even the positive ones expressing shock. (Moderately successful, raved the Los Angeles Times. Waterworld is a pretty damn good summer movie. There, Ive said it, Newsweek confessed.) Watching it now, divorced from the contextual circus of expectations, its an ambitious, high-octane romp loaded with impressive stunts involving flaming jet-skis. Every meticulously reported dollar is visible on the screen. Things get a little pompous and meandering at times, but overall: not so bad.

Its box-office haul wasnt so bad, either.

Although Bill Washington, the head of Universal at the time, estimates that bad publicity wiped at least $50 million from Waterworlds theatrical take, it still made $88 million in the United States, with a worldwide total gross of $265 million. Its a disappointing figure, considering the storied budget, but not as disastrous as the rubbernecking public anticipated. Between TV rights, home video sales, and three themed attractions at Universal Studiosall of which are still running in 2020it eventually even turned a profit.

[Photo: Universal/Getty Images]None of that seems to matter. The movie still went down in cinema legend fulfilling its destiny as a hubristic cautionary tale. A year and a half after its release, in January 1997, The Simpsons immortalized Waterworld as a video game that costs 40 quarters to play, and then once the user starts playing, immediately costs another 40 quarters.

Defying reality, Waterworld had stuck the narrative landing and become a joke. Why?

One of the reasons is that the standards for box-office success back then were different. Worldwide gross was expected to boost a movies success, not account for it entirely. As media outlets were sharpening their knives before Waterworlds release, People Magazine scoffed that the movie would have to make $265 million worldwide in order to break evenexactly the amount it ended up making. It was considered almost a cheat at the time, an inflated total.

For better or worse, factoring that global box office into projections has now become a critical factor of filmmaking. A movie like last years Fast & Furious Presents Hobbs & Shaw can bring in $173 million in the U.S. on a $200 million budget, and still become a huge hit because its worldwide total is over four times as much as the domestic. (As a side note, adjusted for inflation, Waterworlds domestic gross would be nearly the same as Hobbs & Shaws.)

More importantly for Waterworlds reputation, it arrived at the demarcating moment when the world entered the information age.

How much do you remember about 1995? Heres a primer, if you werent there. Creep by TLC was booming from every Jeep speaker. The first Pixar movie, Toy Story, bowed in theaters, competing with Pierce Brosnans first appearance as James Bond, in Goldeneye. On TV, Seinfeld aired its infamous Soup Nazi episode and Drew Barrymore flashed David Letterman. And in the digital world, Javascript was invented, Match.com went live as a free beta offering, the first pro sports game streamed online (the Mariners vs. the Yankees), and Newsweek ran a feature on why the internet would not drastically alter the future.

Of course, the internet was already in the process of drastically altering the future. In 1994, while Waterworld was still in preproduction, the interstellar teleportation saga, Stargate, became the first movie to have a dedicated promotional website. Casual movie fans were just starting to seek out information online, the first phase of their metamorphosis into armchair box-office analysts. Waterworld was likely the ground floor for many metatextual movie nerds who, two years earlier, might have had to be Entertainment Weekly subscribers to follow the ordeal of Last Action Hero (another famously troubled production.)

Our perception is fueled by the increased availability and accessibility of information on movies, a group of academics wrote in The Social Science of Cinema. The web offers weekly and sometimes even daily box-office figures; blockbusters make it to the first page of newspapers; and moviegoers pay attention not only to directors, stars, and awards, but also to box-office results.

The year after Waterworld underperformed in theaters, Aint It Cool News, the Drudge Report of movie blogs, ushered in an era where troubled production scuttlebutt could go viral. (In 1997, AICN founder Harry Knowles posted unflattering, spy-procured set pics from Starship Troopers.) Pretty soon, the comment section of movie blogs became something that could make studio executives sweat.

Waterworld arrived right at the precipice of audiences beginning to play a bigger role in cementing the narrative around a movies success or failureand it may have been their first victim.

Not many people remember it now, but Titanic almost followed suit.

During the long, soggy road to Titanics release in December of 1997, the film was frequently compared with Waterworld. Both projects involved tons of water. Each saw its budget soar, becoming the most expensive movie ever in its time. Cast and crew injuries plagued both sets. And both became Hollywood gossip-magnets.

Aside from all the surface resemblances to Waterworld, movie insiders seemed to be rooting for Titanic to fail so that it would complete the irresistible narrative of a movie about a famous disaster itself becoming a famous disaster.

James Cameron refused to let that happen.

He was aware of how a powerful meta-narrative of bad buzz could swallow up a movie, and figured out an end run around it. He delayed the release of Titanic from July to December.

I pitched the concept that the best way to deal with the negative press was to take a step back. To move away from the crescendo of ridicule and let them fall on their face, Cameron told The Hollywood Reportera few years ago. They could only sustain the negative story so long. By December it would have long ago run its course, and theyd have to come up with something new to make ink. That something might just be the fact that the film was actually good, and worth all the drama of production.

Obviously, Camerons plan worked. Titanic went on to become the most successful movie of all time, for a while, and now barely anyone remembers that at one point several members of the crew fell ill from eating chowder spiked with PCP.

The narrative around Waterworld, however, came to define that film, full stop, erasing its moderate success from cinema history. The dawning information age then empowered audiences and created an environment where the perception of a films success is everything. Justice League, for instance, made well over double its exorbitant $300 million dollar budget in 2017, but let much of it audience down so thoroughly that it will likely always be remembered as an embarrassing flop.

In the next phase of cinema, as more and more films debut on streaming platforms, and box office numbers less often serve as bellwethers, audience perception stands to became an even bigger factor in defining a films success.

Ultimately, though, being saddled with a narrative like Waterworlds isnt the worst fate that can befall a film, even if it seems in retrospect like cinematic malpractice. At least the movie has posterity, a memorable legacy.

Kevin Costners plodding followup, The Postman, simply flopped so hard that nobody remembers it at all.

Read more from the original source:

25 years ago, 'Waterworld' forever changed how we think about hits and flops - Fast Company

(Wednesday Market Open) The major indices have tried up. Theyve tried down. And today it looks like theyre going to try opening flat.

Its been one of those weeks where direction is hard to define. Mondays rally turned into Tuesdays selloff, ending a five-day win streak for the S&P 500 Index (SPX). This kind of choppy, directionless, low-volume action could continue throughout the next few days as investors await the start of earnings season next week.

Could overseas markets provide inspiration, the way they did earlier this week? Mayne not. The picture looks a bit cloudy with European stock indices in the red and Asian indices, other than Japan, glowing a nice shade of green.

Shanghai stocks are on a pretty amazing run, up almost 8% so far this week. Theres good things coming out of there, but remember, were behind them now. As they talk of coming out of the virus situation, the U.S. just had its biggest day of cases. At some point, the hope is that the U.S. can follow in Chinas direction as far as caseloads.

Crude continues to hang in there, holding $40 a barrel. Meanwhile, gold got back in the saddle today and topped $1,800 an ounce. Thats not too far from a nine-year high and might reinforce the fact that many investors remain worried about the global economy.

Though Wednesday begins with less than a bang and Tuesday ended with a whimper, its hard to give up on the week considering how resilient major indices have been. A lot could depend on the mega-cap $1 trillion behemoths in the coming days, as companies like Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT), and Amazon (AMZN) all have so much influence on the market.

Keep in mind, though, that the mega-caps can sometimes mislead. The largest stocks by capitalization are generally way ahead of the rest of the market as far as 2020 performance, meaning the major indices can get distorted by the heavyweights.

Despite all the negative sentiment lingering from Tuesday, remember what we said earlier this week: The market remains very reliant on the latest headline. Yesterday, the bad news from United (UAL) might have been enough to put an arrow through the indices. Today, who knows what headlines might pop up and possibly send things in another direction.

In the old days, a bad travel day was one where you missed a connecting flight or got stuck in a middle seat for six hours.

In these COVID-19 times, however, a bad travel day is one like Tuesday. Boeing (BA) shares crumbled, weighing on the Dow Jones Industrial Average ($DJI), and the airlines took a blow from UAL warning of lower bookings and employee furloughs. Shares of UAL tumbled nearly 8%, and other airlines also got hammered.

When you look at tens of thousands of employees possibly being furloughed, theres no way to spin it as good news. Just a few weeks ago, airlines were talking about adding more flights and bookings picking up. What might be hurting the airlines now are these 14-day quarantines being put in place by some cities and states. People dont want to travel if it means they might face being stuck in a hotel room or in someones house for 14 days once they arrive.

The challenge around these different rules in different states faced by the airlines is just part of a larger challenge for anyone trying to grasp the state of the entire U.S. economy. Each state has its own set of qualifications and facts on the ground, so to speak. If business picks up in four or five states, does that mean anything for the rest of the country?

Probably not, because for every state that starts to get back on its feet, another state goes the opposite way. And many, if not most, states, are losing the tourist element they depend on so much every summer. How many visitors are going to, say, Alaska, this year? With the cruise industry in dry dock, its fair to say probably not many.

Speaking of cruises, that was another sector facing turbulent waters Tuesday. Carnival (CCL) and Royal Caribbean (RCL) shares both ran aground as the cruise industry continues to face delays getting back to the high seas. This is a sector that saw some buying interest in June, but at least on Tuesday a lot of investors seemed less prone to embracing risk.

You could also see that risk aversion in the performance of the bond market Tuesday, where yields finished near their lows after plunging about five basis points on the day for the 10-year Treasury. Its now been a month since that little yield rally we saw in early June that took the 10-year yield up to 0.9%, and it seems like a long time ago. The way the bond market rallied heavily into its close Tuesday is actually a bit worrisome, because it could hint at more risk aversion heading into today.

Another worrisome thing was seeing longer-term yields decline more than shorter-term ones on Tuesday. This kind of action means the yield curve got flatter, typically a sign of economic slowdown. However, one day isnt a trend.

Major indices, like bond yields, finished Tuesday near their lows for the session as cyclical sectors saw the worst of it, meaning theres a weak tone heading into Wednesday. Theres some sentiment that Mondays buying got overdone, especially when the S&P 500 Index (SPX) started getting in sight of its post-pandemic highs above 3200. The slip below 3150 at the close Tuesday was technically a weak way to finish, and sets up a possible test of more support around 3130 today if selling continues.

As if there werent already enough on investors minds, an old nemesis re-emerged in the headlines today: Brexit. Yep, that hasnt gone away. European newspapers reported today that the United Kingdom wont make a trade deal with the European Union if the EU isnt willing to compromise, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson reportedly told German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday. In other words, its the threat of a no-deal Brexit rearing its head again.

Then there was some sad news from the corporate world as Brooks Brothers filed for bankruptcy more than 200 years after being founded. Its a victim of coronavirus and casual Fridays, media reports said.

Transports Diverge: One interesting thing noted on CNBC yesterday is that even though airline stocks have been getting pounded, other transport stocks havent done that badly lately. FedEx (FDX) and JB Hunt Transportation Services (JBHT)both members of the Dow Jones Transportation Average ($DJT)actually gained on Tuesday.

What could this dichotomy tell us? Maybe that people arent taking flights to Alaska, but still are ordering enough goods to keep the delivery companies busy. Stronger demand for transportation services could speak to decent consumer demand, and one company that might have some insight is Bed, Bath & Beyond (BBBY), which is scheduled to report earnings this afternoon.

Also consider keeping an eye out tomorrow morning for earnings from Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA), as well as the closely watched initial weekly unemployment claims that come out early Thursday. Analysts expect initial claims to total 1.35 million, down from 1.43 million the prior week, according to research firm Briefing.com. Any improvement in this leading indicator could put a tailwind behind the market, while an uptick in claims might form a headwind. Stay tuned.

Guessing Game: Its that time when prognosticators put out their best guesses on how the biggest companies performed in the latest quarter. FactSet last week pegged the Q2 earnings decline for S&P 500 firms at a dramatic 43.8%, with all 11 sectors seen slipping year-over-year. Thats pretty terrible, but not as bad as Q4 2008 when earnings plummeted 69%. What makes it a little tough for analysts this time around is the lack of guidance from so many companies due to coronavirus concerns. Only 49 S&P 500 companies have issued guidance so far, down from the 106 normally seen by this date, FactSet said.

The worst sector performers in Q2 could be Energy, Consumer Discretionary, Industrials, and Financials, FactSet said. Those sectors correspond to some extent with the businesses hit worst by shutdowns during coronavirus. Research firm CFRA is even more pessimistic about overall earnings prospects, putting average losses for the S&P 500 at 45.7%. It sees the same worst three but thinks Real Estate will shove aside Financials to be the fourth on the list no one wants to be on.

Remember that these estimates get updated constantly as earnings season advances and companies (maybe) deliver some guidance. So, its extra important to keep an eye on the numbers in coming weeks. Well continue providing updates here.

Investors See Resilience: One possible lesson to take away from the June TDAmeritrade Investor Movement Index (IMXSM) is that the market remains resilient because many investors still believe in this economy. Since a 6% pounding on June 11 that wiped out $1.6 trillion in value, the SPX was up 6% through Monday. Consumer Discretionary and Info Tech shares topped the scorecard, jumping at least 9%.

Looking over the IMX data, it appears the June dip was met with buying, not with fear. Retail investors tracked by the IMX seem to believe domestically things will start to return. Domestic travel and the domestic economy have a chance to start to return to more normal levels. Thats the hope, anyway. Its still playing out day by day, with plenty of chances for more hiccups as the virus doesnt appear to be going anywhere. Will these enthusiastic investors reap more rewards in coming weeks from jumping back in, and will future dips get met with more buying? The jury is still out. The IMX is TDAmeritrades proprietary, behavior-based index, aggregating Main Street investor positions and activity to measure what investors actually were doing and how they were positioned in the markets.

Good Trading,JJ@TDAJJKinahan

Check out all of our upcoming Webcasts or watch any of our hundreds of archived videos, covering everything from market commentary to portfolio planning basics to trading strategies for active investors. You can also deepen your investing know-how with our free online immersive courses. No matter your experience level, theres something for everybody.

Looking to stay on top of the markets? Check out the TDAmeritrade Network, live programming which brings you market news and helps you hone your trading knowledge. And for the days hottest happenings, delivered right to your inbox, you can now subscribe to the daily Market Minute newsletter here.

TDAmeritrade Network is brought to you by TDAmeritrade Media Productions Company. TDAmeritrade Media Productions Company and TDAmeritrade, Inc. are separate but affiliated subsidiaries of TDAmeritrade Holding Corporation. TDAmeritrade Media Productions Company is not a financial adviser, registered investment advisor, or broker-dealer.

Original post:

Hurry Up and Wait: Market Struggles for Direction as Caseloads Rise and Earnings Loom - The Ticker Tape

(This story was first published in the Times of India on July 10, 2020)NEW DELHI: On February 15, 2012, Italian marines aboard the oil tanker Enrica Lexie opened fire at an Indian fishing boat 20 nautical miles off the southern Kerala coast. They had mistaken it for a pirate skiff and their gunfire killed two of the 10 fishermen on board. More than eight years later, it has emerged that there was a 14-year-old boy, too, on that boat, according to his family.

Prijin A never recovered from the trauma of that incident and never received any compensation because, officially, he was never on the boat. He finally took his own life on July 2, 2019, a little more than seven years since he saw his friends die.

The Enrica Lexie incident attracted international attention, briefly sparked a diplomatic stand-off between India and Italy, and saw protracted litigation till the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague on July 2 this year removed the case from Indias jurisdiction but also ruled that the surviving fishermens families be compensated adequately by Italy.

Prijin was the sole breadwinner for his family. On July 6, his mother and seven sisters wrote to the Centre demanding that Prijins posthumous rights as a minor be protected as per international child rights law and the Indian Constitution, and that Rs 100 crore compensation be obtained from Italy.

Italy gfx

After the high-seas shooting at around 4.30pm, Enrica Lexie allegedly tried to speed away and the St Anthony turned back for Neendakara. Mid-sea, Prijin was shifted to another fishing boat as its captain Fredy John Bosco, originally from Prijins native village in Kanyakumari, feared that he would be hauled up for child labour.

As the matter moved to the courts, Fredy often visited Prijin and his family, convincing them to keep Prijins presence on the boat a secret and assuring them that he was doing everything to get them justice and proper compensation.

The familys plea accessed by TOI to the Centre, moved through advocate Yash Thomas Munnally, claims that for a long time, due to the trauma of the firing incident, Prijin was afraid to venture out to sea, or to even do minor fishing-related jobs. He became visibly disturbed, was unable to sleep and suffered from nightmares, the plea said.

The seemingly endless wait for compensation also pushed Prijin into a deep depression and his mental condition worsened, his relatives claim. He took his life on July 2, 2019. His mother and sisters have now alleged that a fair investigation was not carried out and that Prijin was denied hs rights as a minor as per international child rights law and the IndianConstitution.

Citing the $2.6-million compensation deal following a collision between the USS Greeneville and Ehime Maru in 2001, his relatives are seeking a total compensation of Rs 100 crore (around $13.35 million). Rs 70 crore is being demanded as damages for mental, physical and emotional suffering, and Rs 30 crore for wrongful violence, loss of livelihood and violation of child rights.

Link:

14-year-old was on boat when Italian marines shot 2 dead - Ahmedabad Mirror

Lamborghini isnt stranger to life on the fast lane, but its finally extending its need for speed beyond the tarmac to take over the seas too.

The collaborative effort between two of Italys finest exports, Automobili Lamborghini and The Italian Sea Groups Tecnomar brand, will see a 63-foot limited edition yacht thats essentially a supercar on water.

Named the Tecnomar for Lamborghini 63 after 1963 the year Lamborghini was founded the boat lives up to its supercar namesake for being capable of reaching speeds of up to 111kph, which is considered blistering for a motorboat that size.

Lamborghinis extensive archives meant that the 63 had plenty to be inspired by, but ultimately two of its most futuristic cars were selected: The Sin FKP 37, Lamborghinis first hybrid supercar to use supercapacitor technologies, and the Terzo Millennio, a self-healing fully-electric concept. Both cars are equally out-of-this-world, and their sharp angular lines have been applied to the yachts hull and hard-top for aerodynamics and performance even the bow sports the same Y-shaped front lights as both cars. As a little easter egg for fans, Lamborghini also incorporated subtle references to the Miura and Countach.

High-performance materials were also key, and the result is a yacht that weighs a mere 24 tonnes, thanks to the car manufacturers expertise on speed and lightweight components such as carbon fibre. Even so, it wasnt a walk in the park for both marques. Engineering for the high seas follow a different set of rules, so employing the design language of a car was a challenge that had to be overcome.

Of course, the bragging rights of owning a Raging Bull-badged superyacht could only be topped by the fact that it matches your Aventador or Huracan. Lamborghinis Ad Personam programme will be available here to ensure that the same colours and materials of your car will be applied to the yacht. Two interior layouts will be available too depending on the clients needs.

The driving experience extends to the automotive-style pilot cabin, which sees all navigation and monitoring systems fully integrated with carbon fibre and carbon skin. Even the captain gets a racy drivers seat at the steering wheel, complete with the same Start/Stop button, only this time it fires up twin 2,000hp MAN V12 diesel engines instead of naturally-aspirated 6.5-litre V12s.

Priced at 3 million (approx. HK$26 million), only 63 (duh) of these will be made, and the first of the limited edition series will launch early next year. Head to Lamborghini online to learn more.

This article was first published on Lifestyle Asia Singapore.

Read the original here:

Lamborghinis new HK$26 million luxury yacht is the supercar of the seas - Lifestyle Asia

So many urgent issues are undermining Greece-Turkey relations today its almost a surprise these two neighbours with a history of conflict are not already at war.

On Friday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoan finalised the conversion of Istanbuls iconic Hagia Sophia from a museum back into a mosque, a week after Greeces Foreign Ministry denounced such a move as unacceptable and a breach of the structures UNESCO World Heritage status.

Built as a cathedral in the 6th century by Byzantine Emperor Justinian, Hagia Sophia holds a special place in the hearts of many Orthodox Christians, particularly in Greece, which sees itself as the heir of the Greek-speaking Byzantines of Constantinople. Greek officials described the reversion as an "open provocation to the civilised world" and said the nationalism displayed by Erdoan... takes his country back six centuries.

Underscoring Turkeys continued claims on a number of Greek islands in the Aegean Sea, Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar on Wednesday told the BBC that, despite the Lausanne Treaty barring any militarisation of 23 Aegean islands, Greece maintained a military presence on 16 of them.

Turkeys military and political elites completely disregard that Greece is not just about the mainland, Nikos Michailidis, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Missouri-St Louis, told Ahval in a podcast. We have thousands of islands and this is something they dont want to see, dont want to accept.

Last week, the Greek air force intercepted Turkish jets and engaged them in mock dogfights after Turkish fighter planes committed 50 violations of Greek airspace over the Aegean in a single day, according to the Greek Reporter.

Cyprus has been a major source of Turkish-Greek tensions since at least 1974, when Turkish forces invaded the waterlocked nation in an effort to head off a coup plot from Athens. The island has since been divided between the EU-recognised Republic of Cyprus and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, recognised only by Turkey. Since early 2019, Turkey has launched six natural gas drilling operations in waters claimed by Cyprus and has said it plans more.

On Wednesday, the United States announced that Cypriot soldiers would be able to take part in a major U.S. military training programme a possible first step toward ending the U.S. arms embargo on Cyprus. Turkey quickly criticised the move.

Turkey has been bullying Greece, said Michailidis. It has been bullying Cyprus. Its still occupying Cyprus and they dont want to negotiate a solution based on international law.

On Thursday, the European parliament debated Turkeys negative role in the Eastern Mediterranean and Libya, where Ankara has been backing the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA). That support has increased in recent months in part because Ankara signed a maritime borders deal with the GNA late last year that essentially erased the island of Crete, which lies between the coasts of Libya and Turkey, off the map.

This week, Turkey reserved a vast area of the Eastern Mediterranean between Libya and Crete for naval exercises. Ankara has said it plans to begin drilling soon off the Libyan coast and possibly near Crete.

The Greek government does hope that they wont dare to go and continue their drilling off the coast of Crete, said Michailidis. This would create serious complications that might end up in a military confrontation.

Athens has warned that any drilling in its continental shelf will spark a heated response, and moved to strengthen ties with regional ally Israel. The two signed several defence agreements this month, outlining greater collaboration in weapons and training.

Their alliance is also about energy. In January, Greece, Israel and Cyprus signed a deal to build a 1,900-km undersea pipeline to carry natural gas from the Eastern Mediterraneans gas fields to Europe.

Last but not least is migration and refugees. London-based research group Forensics Architecture concluded this week that it was highly probable that Mohammed al-Arab, a 22-year-old from Aleppo, was killed by Greek soldiers in March. He was among thousands of migrants seeking to enter Greece after Turkey followed through on Erdoans threat to open the gates for refugees, possibly repeating the crisis of 2015-2016, when some 2 million migrants entered Europe.

Athens has rejected accusations of using live fire, and many have accused Turkey of weaponising refugees to pressure Europe into providing greater funding for the 3.5 million refugees already in Turkey, or to come to Turkeys aid in Syrias Idlib province, where some 2 million displaced people are living in ad hoc camps along the Turkish border.

Greece and the European Union are now facing calls to investigate al-Arabs death amid fears of increased Greek aggressions along the border. Deutsche Welle and Belllingcat reported in May that Greek police had been forcibly deporting asylum-seekers back into Turkey, as Turkey had reportedly done with Syrians last year. There have also been several reports that Greek security forces have pushed migrant boats back toward Turkey and sent migrants back across the Aegean on windowless inflatable rafts.

You have this ongoing paranoia within Greek politics about having to face a second wave like in 2015, Alexander Clarkson, a lecturer on European studies at Kings College London, told Ahval in a podcast.

He said that more nationalist, authoritarian elements within the Greek police and security services had come to the fore, and European officials had done little to change their methods.

The EU didnt just tacitly back the use of maximum force against potential refugee entrances, they actually even praised it to a certain extent, said Clarkson.

Michailidis, the anthropology expert, saw Athens doing its best in a difficult situation for which it shouldered little responsibility, unlike Turkey, which had played a role in the Syrian civil war since its early days and more recently mounted several military offensives into northern Syria.

The Greek government has been trying for years to convince our European counterparts that we need to find a solution, we need to help these people, said Michailidis. But Greece cannot do it by itself... We need to find a solution with Turkey and the European Union.

German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer might agree. On Tuesday he said it was shameful that the EU had yet to solve the migration issue five years after the start of the 2015-2016 refugee crisis.

We cannot leave Italy, Malta, Greece or Spain alone to deal with this issue, Seehofer said, explaining that most EU countries had declined to accept new arrivals as part of a new initiative. Very many member states refuse to get involved.

At least until September, when the European Commission is expected to present its migration reform proposal, Greece will remain exposed to the whims of the Turkish government. Turkeys Foreign Minister Mevlt Cavuolu on Monday said Turkey could no longer hold back those who wanted to leave for Europe.

On Thursday, the largest political group in European Parliament, the European Peoples Party (EPP), urged the EU and member states to vigorously defend Cyprus and Greece against Turkish aggression by deploying naval forces or levying sanctions.

In a tweet, EPP chairman Manfred Weber described Turkeys actions as unacceptable. Vangelis Meimarakis, head of the EPPs Greek delegation, said Erdoan had crossed the line, and if he continues to challenge Europe there will be a single and immediate response.

Clarkson said the time had come for Turkey to take advantage of its gains and begin talks. In the end, the East Med dispute will have to be negotiated, he said.

This week, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said that since their June 26 phone call he felt comfortable picking up the phone to speak to Erdoan. But does his counterpart feel the same way?

Clarkson wondered if Erdoan might wait too long, until Turkeys economic crisis undermined its strong negotiating position or Ankaras high seas activities provoked an armed response.

Is Turkey willing to sit down and use the kind of advantages its build up to then follow a pathway through to some negotiated settlement, which will require compromises, will require approaching Athens and Nicosia? he said.

See original here:

Turkeys negotiating window with Greece, EU may be closing - Ahval