LOCH SHIRA

Satellite images obtained by Reuters on Thursday show a build-up of Chinese civilian vessels near contested Thitu Island, Manila's key outpost in the South China Sea, but a senior Philippine navy officer said they are "not a cause for concern".One of the images taken by Maxar Technologies on Monday and reviewed by Reuters shows about 60 vessels, some within 2 nautical miles of Thitu, a strategically important island from which Manila monitors Chinese vessels and aircraft in the busy waterway.Vice Admiral Alfonso Torres, chief of the Philippines' Western Command, said it was common for "maritime militia" ships to gather in the area.

European Union envoys will discuss a 15th package of sanctions in response to Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, including on tankers carrying Russian oil and Chinese firms involved in making drones for Moscow, EU diplomats said.A total of 29 entities and 54 individuals are lined up to be added to more than 2,200 on the existing sanctions list, which bans travel and freezes their assets within the 27-member bloc, the diplomats said. They did not anticipate significant dissent.A more significant package will be proposed in January once Poland takes over the EU's rotating presidency from Hungary, whose Russia-friendly leader has frequently delayed or blocked measures that help Ukraine.

Three years after bulk carrier MV Wakashio ran aground on a coral reef off Mauritius, spilling 1000 tons of a new type of marine fuel oil, Curtin University-led research has confirmed the oil is still present in an environmentally sensitive mangrove forest close to Ramsar conservation sites.Lead researcher Dr. Alan Scarlett, from Curtin’s WA Organic and Isotope Geochemistry Center in the School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, said the chemical ‘fingerprint’ of the oil found in the mangrove sediments was a near-perfect match for the Very Low Sulphur Fuel Oil (VLSFO) spilled by the Wakashio in 2020, the first recorded spill involving this type of fuel.

Sweden is asking a Chinese vessel to return to Swedish waters to help facilitate the Nordic country's investigation into recent breaches of undersea fibre-optic cables in the Baltic Sea, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said on Tuesday.Two subsea cables, one linking Finland and Germany and the other connecting Sweden to Lithuania, were damaged in less than 24 hours on Nov. 17-18, raising suspicions of sabotage, countries and companies involved said.Denmark's military said soon afterwards that its vessels were staying close to Chinese bulk carrier Yi Peng 3, which travelled through the Baltic Sea at the time and now sits idle in international waters but inside Denmark's exclusive economic zone.

Washington comes to grips with the reality that the domestic intermodal equation includes four modes. One of them is by water. It’s about time.One of the great things about spending five years in retirement (I mean, aside from being blissfully idle while you toiled) is that, when you do come back to work, you enjoy a truly fresh perspective in all aspects of your job. Not only does this provide new energy, more importantly, a half decade of change is much easier to discern. Nowhere is this more apparent than the state of American ports today.