Relationships

21 july 2019 Iran’s military has released footage showing its elite Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Special Forces impounding the British-flagged tanker Stena Impero in the Strait of Hormuz on Friday. A second tanker, Mesdar, was also boarded briefly. Iran says the vessel was failing to respect international maritime laws in the Persian Gulf, with …

19 JULY 2019 Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Friday they had captured a British-flagged oil tanker in the Gulf after Britain seized an Iranian vessel this month, ratcheting up tension along a vital international oil shipping route. Britain said it was urgently seeking information about the Stena Impero after the …

18 JULY 2019 Uncertainty around Brexit may be making its mark, but the loss of vessels this year from the UK Ship Register may also be due to the requirement for vessel operators to comply with EU maritime regulations. According to figures from VesselsValue.com (VV), 234 vessels have reflagged from …

17 JUL 2019 When modern humans started emerging from Africa and spreading throughout Eurasia, they found many places already occupied by older hominids such as Neanderthals and Denisovans. As humans do, we got rather friendly with our new neighbours: evidence of that hanky panky lives on in our DNA today. But …

17 july 2019 An Israeli NGO has asked a court in Gibraltar to confiscate and sell the Iranian-controlled tanker Grace 1in order to satisfy an American court judgement. In 2017, pro-Israel nonprofit Shurat Hadin won a lawsuit accusing the Iranian and Syrian governments of complicity in the death of an American child who …

17 july 2019 10 Turkish seafarers from the freighter Paksoy-1 were kidnapped by pirates in the Gulf of Guinea on Saturday evening, the Turkish foreign ministry said Tuesday. According to operator Kadioglu Denizcilik, 12 heavily-armed pirates boarded the vessel as she was under way on a voyage from Cameroon to …

17 july 2019 American officials have raised concerns that Iran may have seized the 1,900 dwt product tanker Riah. The AIS signal for the Riah (IMO 8816455) was last detected by commercial tracking services on Saturday. At the time of the last transmission, she was under way in the Strait of Hormuz, making two …

16 JULY 2019 The number of hijackings and armed attacks on ships sailing off Nigeria has dropped according to new figures from the International Piracy Reporting Centre, IMB. For the Gulf of Guinea and off the coast of Nigeria, 21 pirate incidents were registered in the first half of 2019, …

16 JUL 2019 For the first time, scientists have identified a set of specific gene variants linked to anorexia nervosa, providing some of the strongest evidence yet that the eating disorder is not purely a psychiatric illness. In a massive, six-year-long investigation involving researchers from over 100 institutions worldwide, scientists discovered …

15 JULY 2019 China’s trade with countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) reached $617.5 billion in the first half of 2019, up 9.7 percent year-on-year. This increase was greater than the growth rate of the country’s total trade for the period which remained stable at 3.9 percent, …