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Port and maritime studies dealing with containerization have observed traffic concentration and dispersion throughout the world. Globalization, intermodal transportation, and technological revolutions in the shipping industry have resulted in both network extension and rationalization. However, lack of precise data on inter-port relations prevent the application of wide network theories to global maritime container networks, which are often examined through case studies of specific firms or regions. This paper presents an analysis of the global liner shipping network in 1996 and 2006, a period of rapid change in port hierarchies and liner service configurations. While it refers to literature on port system development, shipping networks, and port selection, it is one of the only analyses of the properties of the global container shipping network. The paper analyzes the relative position of ports in the global network through indicators of centrality. The results reveal a certain level of robustness in the global shipping network. While transhipment hub flows and gateway flows might slightly shift among nodes in the network, the network properties remain rather stable in terms of the main nodes polarizing the network and the overall structure of the system. Additionally, mapping the changing centrality of ports confirms the impacts of global trade and logistics shifts on the port hierarchy and indicates that changes are predominantly geographic.

Panama revokes registration of last migrant rescue ship in central Mediterranean.

- A pregnant woman has died and at least 22 people are missing after the partial sinking of a rubber boat in the central Mediterranean Sea. - Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has brought 71 survivors on board the search and rescue vessel the Geo Barents. - MSF urges the Maltese and Italian authorities to allocate a place of safety for the disembarkation of survivors as soon as possible.

As an important component of new western land-sea corridor, the construction of Pinglu Canal will effectively alleviated waiting time and congestion costs and enhance the reliability and resilience of the regional maritime transport network in the post-pandemic era in particular. From the perspective of competition and cooperation game, this paper investigates typical transportation routes from the port of Jakarta in Indonesia to the port of Nanning in China from the key factors of the changes in freight volume and the evolution of profits and subsidies, considering local government subsidies, environmental costs, marine emissions and other critical factors. The results demonstrated that in the centralized strategies adopted by two transport route operators, as the volume of goods transported through Pinglu Canal increased, so the corresponding profits increased. The increase in subsidies also contributed to generating the volume of freight through Pinglu Canal, but the social welfare under the decentralized strategy adopted by both transport route operators was more effective than that of the centralized strategy.

A regional conference of countries in west, central and southern Africa has committed to continue to work at both national and regional levels to boost preparedness to deal with oil spill incidents which could be devastating both for the marine environment and financially.

On August 17, while conducting search and rescue operations off the Libyan coast, the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières(MSF) rescue vessel the Bourbon Argos was approached and attacked by a group of armed men onboard an unidentified speedboat, MSF said today, strongly condemning the attack.

The Responder will patrol the central Mediterranean route between North Africa and Italy, where most of this year's 3,100 migrant drownings have occurred

In its quest to maintain its leadership as the best port in the West and Central Africa sub-region, the Ghana Ports and Harbour Authority (GPHA) has secured drones to counter terrorist attacks.

A ferry carrying 189 passengers and crew capsized Thursday minutes after it left a central Philippine port in choppy waters, leaving at least 36 dead and 26 others missing, coast guard officials said.

EU ministers have backed a set of actions to make Europe's seas safer and to protect the EUs maritime security interests from the threats which it faces. The Action Plan, part of the EU's Maritime Security Strategy adopted in June 2014, takes a cross-border and cross-sector approach to confronting the seaborne perils which the EU is confronted with. The plan is also central to the EU's commitment to boost the maritime economy since investments in the European maritime domain can only be prosperous if the seas are safe and secure.

A consortium of environmental scientists including RICE University's Pedro ALVAREZ has expressed strong concern about the impact of a controversial Central American canal across Nicaragua.

The Coast Guard offloaded approximately 36,000 pounds of cocaine Tuesday, which was seized during a counter-drug patrol in international waters of the Eastern Pacific Ocean. The contraband offloaded by the Coast Guard Cutter Bertholf's (WMSL-750) crew represents 17 interdictions of suspected smuggling vessels off the coasts of Central and South America by five Coast Guard cutters between early February and early March.

Shipping emissions are likely to increase significantly in the coming decades, alongside increasing emphasis on the sustainability and environmental impacts of the maritime transport sector. Exhaust gas cleaning systems ("scrubbers"), using seawater or fresh water as cleaning media for sulfur dioxide, are progressively used by shipping companies to comply with emissions regulations. Little is known about the chemical composition of the scrubber effluent and its ecological consequences for marine life and biogeochemical processes. If scrubbers become a central tool for atmospheric pollution reduction from shipping, modeling, and experimental studies will be necessary to determine the ecological and biogeochemical effects of scrubber wash water discharge on the marine environment. Furthermore, attention must be paid to the regulation and enforcement of environmental protection standards concerning scrubber use. Close collaboration between natural scientists and social scientists is crucial for progress toward sustainable shipping and protection of the marine environment.

Russia launches floating nuclear reactor in Arctic despite warnings.

Migrants : l'île grecque de Lesbos est en "état d'urgence" d'après le HCR.

Biological invasions often result from transfers of organisms during trade activities. In coastal ecosystems, commercial ships are a dominant source of species transfers globally, and ships' ballast water (BW) is a major focus of biosecurity management and policy to reduce invasions. While trade drives shipping patterns, diverse vessel types and behaviors exist such that the quantitative relationship between trade and BW dynamics is still poorly resolved, limiting both science and management. Here, we evaluated a new method to predict BW discharge using trade data, by explicitly considering known BW practices according to vessel and commodity type. Specifically, we estimated the relationship between tonnage of overseas exports and BW discharge volume for San Francisco Bay (SFB), California, as a model system to demonstrate this approach. Using extensive datasets on shipborne exports and BW discharge, we (a) evaluated spatial and temporal patterns across nearly 20 ports in this estuary from 2006 to 2014 and (b) developed a predictive model to estimate overseas BW discharge volume from foreign export tonnage for the whole estuary. Although vessel arrivals in SFB remained nearly constant from 2006 to 2014, associated tonnage of exported commodities more than doubled and BW discharge more than tripled. Increased BW volume resulted from increased frequency and per capita discharge of bulk carriers from Asia and tankers from western Central America and Hawaii, reflecting shifts in direction of commodity movement. The top 11 export commodities (59% of total export tonnage) were transported on bulk carriers or tankers. In a multivariate linear model, annual tonnage of these top 11 export commodities by vessel type were strong predictors of total bay-wide overseas BW discharge (adjusted R2 = 0.92), creating the potential to estimate past or future BW delivery in SFB. Bulk export tonnage provides valuable insights into BW flux, since most BW discharge to ports is driven by

Port of Gdansk Outlines $3 Billion Expansion Plan.