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Happy 80th birthday Maritime Reporter & Engineering News!  Eighty years is a significant publishing and business accomplishment!Birthdays always cause a look back.  An 80-year review starts in 1939, the close of one very challenging decade, the start of events still reverberating today.  History’s most important history is contained in the last 80 years.Energy dominated every one of those decades.  Consider energy use, say, starting after World War II, from 1950 to 1975.  There was power for everything, from seemingly endless sources of oil, gas and coal, and nuclear power was standing by.Next, recall energy from 1975 to 2000.  Not so happy.

The Strait of Hormuz, the narrow shipping lane between Iran and Oman named after the fabulously wealthy ancient kingdom of Ormus, has fascinated oil traders since the Iranian revolution in 1979. Iran has periodically threatened to close the strait to enemy shipping, while the United States and its allies have pledged to keep it open and maintain freedom of navigation, by force if necessary.The strait has become a symbolic flashpoint in the region-wide confrontation and indirect conflict between Iran on one side and the United States and Saudi Arabia on the other.

Measles is a highly contagious infectious disease.  It is so contagious that 90% of non-immune persons will become infected if an infected person is in the immediate vacinity.  It is an airborne disease spread through coughs, sneezes, and contact with saliva or nasal secretions.  The virus can live for up to two hours in infected airspace or on infected surfaces.  Individuals are infectious from four days before symptoms appear until four days after the patient is symptom-free.  Symptoms include fever, cough, runny nose, inflamed eyes, and a red, flat rash.  Complications may include diarrhea, middle ear infection, and pneumonia.

With the United States and China about to start their respective offshore wind build-ups, grid operators wondering about the efficiency of their turbines or the emissions-areas compliance of their wind-service vessels will be warmed to know there’s someone they can talk to. Yaskawa’s The Switch — a Japanese industrial giant’s European environmental tech business — is offering one-stop wind-energy shopping. As with shipping, you can order permanent magnet generators, drives and converters for your wind turbines. Take heart. The lingo is the same. Yaskawa’s The Switch is well-placed to hybridize vessels or help convert power from wind turbines. In the U.S.

France and Italy forged a military shipbuilding alliance on Friday, as state-controlled Naval Group and Fincantieri signed off on a 50-50 joint venture that will bid for Franco-Italian warship projects and sell to the world market.The alliance reflects the two countries' desire to fend off competition in naval shipbuilding from the likes of China, the United States and Russia.It is targeting orders worth up to 5 billion euros ($5.63 billion) over the next decade. Naval Group said the joint venture aims to build 10-15 warships in that period, with synergies estimated at 10-15%.