Marlink secures contract to provide global satellite voice and data connectivity services for five adventure cruise ships in the O.A.T. Small Ships fleet

The Round Table of international shipping associations plus the OCIMF representing the global shipping and oil industry have announced the geographic boundaries of the 'High Risk Area' for piracy in the Indian Ocean have been reduced, with new advice issued to merchant ship operators.

• Maritime UK's Women in Maritime Taskforce will meet in Belfast today to launch two new initiatives to help improve the sector's gender diversity.
• The Taskforce will be launching a 'Speaker Bank', which will provide a database of female speakers to panels and conferences and an 'Interview Pool', which will loan maritime women to other companies, enabling greater diversity on interview panels.
• The resources, which will be the first of their kind, aim to respond to challenges identified by the Taskforce's work.
• Traditionally the maritime sector has been a classically male-dominated industry.

Around 200 participants gathered during the first day of the ninth edition of the Transport Weeek conference. The event, held at the Courtyard by Marriott Waterfront hotel in Gdynia, Poland, on 5-7 March, 2019, focused on port investments, in-depth analysis of the port market, accompanied by an outlook for the near future.

“2019 is a year for dry cargo owners to prepare their vessels for landmark changes in shipping”

Around 80 participants gathered on March 5th in Gdynia, Poland, to discuss matters related to the issue of air pollution in ports. The seminar, organized by the Baltic Ports Organization, was aimed at evaluating the influence air pollution has on day-to-day operations in ports and cities they are a part of. It also gave an overview of tools available to port authorities in their quest to improve their environmental standards.

High-level representatives from U.N. member states and international organizations gathered at the United Nations Headquarters on Friday to celebrate the U.N. World Wildlife Day (March 3) under the theme: Life below water: for people and planet.

BGS Group hosts the International LNG Congress in Malta, St. Julian’s, on April, 29-30. Since it is the 5th edition of the Congress, the organizers offer a variety of activities beyond the conference rooms.

In a new paper published this week in Science, a group of researchers led by Dr. Chris Free of UC Santa Barbara and Prof. Malin Pinsky of Rutgers found that worldwide fishery productivity has already declined due to warming seas. According to the authors, the maximum sustainable yield of the world's fisheries fell by four percent between 1930-2010 due to warming, with some ecoregions experiencing larger declines of 15-35 percent.

For more than 100 years, the Panama Canal has improved global commerce, transportation and connectivity, enabling growing opportunities for countries around the world. The waterway currently serves 140 routes, connecting 1,700 ports and 160 countries.

Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, Saudi Arabia's crown prince, at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing last Friday.

Led by Kaspars Ozoliņš, Under-Secretary of State in the Latvian Ministry of Transport, a delegation of leading transport and logistics companies in Latvia visited the ports of Hamburg and Lübeck last week. The programme for the most important stops in the Port of Hamburg included a meeting at Hamburg City Hall with Dr. Torsten Sevecke, Under-Secretary of State in the Ministry of Economics, Transport and Innovation. In the course of this, Kaspars Ozoliņš and Ingo Egloff, Joint CEO of Port of Hamburg Marketing (HHM), signed a Memorandum of Understanding, aiming to strengthen and expand cooperation between the Latvian ports of Riga, Ventspils and Liepāja and those in the Hamburg Metropolitan Region.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday that he would delay his planned increase in tariffs on Chinese goods after “productive” talks in China. Trump had planned to raise tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods from 10 to 25 percent on March 1 but now hopes to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping to finalize a deal.

Ship owners need more than a simple warning from regulators as new rules affecting global shipping operations come into play – they need stronger support, according to Panos Kirnidis, CEO of Palau International Ship Registry (PISR).

The Secretary General of the International Maritime Organization (IMO), Mr Kitack Lim, is due to attend a High Level Symposium (HLS) being hosted by the Maritime Authority of Jamaica (MAJ) in Kingston this week.