A vessel owned by Norwegian shipping firm J.J. Ugland was boarded by pirates while at anchor off the coast of Benin on Saturday, and nine crew members were kidnapped, the company said on Sunday.

The remaining crew of the Norwegian-flagged MV Bonita notified local authorities, and the vessel docked at the port city of Cotonou later on Saturday, the company said in a statement. The dry bulker Bonita carried a cargo of gypsum, a mineral commonly used as fertiliser, which was destined for Benin, Ugland said.

While piracy has decreased worldwide, West Africa’s Gulf of Guinea is a high-risk area for abductions and armed robbery, the International Maritime Bureau, a unit of the International Chamber of Commerce, said in a statement last month.

Shippers have reported several abductions in the region in recent months, including eight crew members taken from a German-owned vessel off Cameroon in August, and 10 Turkish sailors off the coast of Nigeria in July.

Citing safety reasons, the Norwegian ship owner did not reveal the crew’s nationalities or how many had avoided capture.

“The Ugland Emergency Response Team are handling this situation as per contingency plans, and they are in contact with relevant authorities. … The families of the crew members have been contacted and will be kept informed by Ugland,” the company said in the statement.

(Source: Reuters)

Global pressure has mounted on American aircraft-manufacturing giant Boeing after the company admitted that cracks had been found in a number of its popular planes following worldwide inspections.

The crisis-hit carrier faced fresh safety concerns on Thursday, as a spokesman officially acknowledged that up to 50 of its 737 NG fleets had cracks in the “pickle fork” — a section of the plane that links the wings to the fuselage and manages the air pressure and aerodynamic forces.

The spokesman said that less than five percent of the 1,000 aircraft inspected at this stage had cracks and had been “immobilized for repairs.”

The announcement came after the Australian airline Qantas reportedly grounded a Boeing 737 NG due to a structural crack, and was speeding up inspection of 32 more planes.

“We never use an airplane until it brings all the security guarantees,” said Chris Snook, the Australian company’s chief engineer.

South Korea also said nine planes had been stalled in early October, including five operated by Korean Air.

The US Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) announced it had ordered an inspection of some Boeing 737 NG after the discovery of “structural cracks” on a copy in China.

The 737 NG is the predecessor of the 737 MAX single-aisle.

The FAA has issued an urgent directive for all airlines to check their 737s that had completed more than 30,000 cycles for pickle fork cracks.

In recent months, Boeing’s reputation has been shattered by two 737 MAX accidents that claimed the lives of 346 people in Indonesia and Ethiopia.

Investigators from the Indonesian National Transportation Safety Committee in Jakarta said systemic design flaws in the 737 Max were compounded by errors by the plane’s pilots, who had not been sufficiently instructed on how to handle malfunctions in the 737 Max’s MCAS anti-stall system.

The anti-stall system on the MAX models has also been blamed in large part for the Ethiopian Airlines tragedy.

The 737 MAXs have been grounded for more than seven months.

Source: Presstv

The collapse of the travel group Thomas Cook has triggered something akin to a political and economic crisis in Britain, with dramatic news of tens of thousands of holidaymakers stranded abroad.

In what has been described as the UK’s “biggest ever peacetime repatriation”, the British government is scrambling to rescue 150,000 stranded British holiday makers.

The government-led repatriation programme, named “Operation Matterhorn”, is expected to last two weeks.

According to multiple media reports, the government has chartered 45 jets to bring stranded customers home, with 64 flights scheduled for yesterday alone.

The tour operator’s collapse has put 22,000 jobs at risk worldwide, with 9,000 UK jobs directly affected.

Thomas Cook’s chief executive, Peter Fankhauser, expressed “profound regret” over the firm’s demise. Underscoring the gravity of the situation, Fankhauser was at pains to apologise to the company’s “millions of customers and thousands of employees”.     

Beside its immediate economic and humanitarian impact, the collapse of the 178-year-old firm is widely viewed as a huge iconic loss.

Thomas Cook collapsed after company bosses failed to secure £200m in emergency funding from creditors and the government to keep it afloat.

Even before the firm’s official collapse, there were extreme and dramatic stories about stranded British tourists abroad.

The Guardian reported on September 22 that some Thomas Cook customers in Tunisia were being prevented from leaving their hotels.

According to the Guardian, British guests at the Les Orangers hotel in the coastal town of Hammamet had been “locked inside their resort” and effectively forced to pay a £1,680 fee, before they were allowed to leave.

Similarly, the tabloid newspaper, The Sun, quoted holiday makers in Tunisia claiming they were being held “hostage” by their hotel, before being allowed to leave once a large fee had been paid.

In view of the company’s nearly two centuries long heritage, and its popularity with millions of holidaying Britons, the demise of Thomas Cook is being widely seen as a massive blow to the UK travel industry.

Source: Presstv   

BUDD Group has reported that each vessel calling at anchorage at Base Buoy (B9) at Douala Port, Cameroon will now be provided with an armed security team for their protection.

This team will remain onboard the vessel throughout her stay at anchorage and will leave after berthing.

This service will be free and will be conducted for an indefinite period.

Source:Hellenicshippingnews

An Indonesian cargo plane with four people on board lost contact with air traffic control , an official said, the latest incident to hit the country’s poor aviation record.

The Twin Otter DHC6-400, set off from the city of Timika on Wednesday at 10:39 am (0239 GMT) and was headed to Ilaga, a mountainous region in the remote eastern province of Papua and was scheduled to arrive 50 minutes after taking off.

“After 2.5 hours, there has been no information from the nearest airport on the plane’s whereabouts, we decided to announce the plane has lost contact,” local transportation agency head, Yan Purba told Metro TV .

The aircraft was carrying three crew members and one passenger as well as 1.7 tonnes of rice.

Search and rescue have been assembled for the missing plane which was flying in a good weather condition, Purba said.

Indonesia relies heavily on air transport to connect its thousands of islands, but mountainous Papua is a particularly difficult area to reach.

The country has a poor aviation safety record and Papua is a particularly problematic place to fly due to its mountainous terrain and frequent poor weather.

In June, a military helicopter with 12 people on board lost contact just minutes after it took off from a remote Papua district Oksibil, to Sentani, also in Papua.

The remains of the aircraft have not been found to this day.

Earlier in 2016, a cargo plane carrying construction materials crashed in Ilaga, killing all four people on board.

(Source: AFP)

US President Donald Trump has been accused by experts of “hyperbole” for falsely claiming that America has become a net energy exporter and no longer needs to import oil from the Middle East.

Trump started one of his busier twitter days on Monday by sending out several posts about the recent attacks on the world’s largest refinery in Saudi Arabia, which slashed the kingdom’s oil production by about half and caused global oil prices to jump.

He gave himself credit for turning America into “the Number One Energy Producer in the World,” implying that his country was immune to the consequences of the devastating attack on Saudi Arabia’s state oil company Aramco.

“Because we have done so well with Energy over the last few years (thank you, Mr. President!), we are a net Energy Exporter, & now the Number One Energy Producer in the World,” he wrote. “We don’t need Middle Eastern Oil & Gas, & in fact have very few tankers there, but will help our Allies!”

Source: Presstv

President Donald Trump says he has authorized the release of the US’ “strategic petroleum reserve” in a bid to control the global oil prices, which are already hiking after 10 Yemeni drones attacked Saudi Aramco facilities.

“Based on the attack on Saudi Arabia, which may have an impact on oil prices, I have authorized the release of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, if needed, in a to-be-determined amount sufficient to keep the markets well-supplied,” Trump said in a tweet early Monday.

“I have also informed all appropriate agencies to expedite approvals of the oil pipelines currently in the permitting process in Texas and various other States,” he added.

Russia plans to issue its first yuan-denominated bond as the country is working with China to cut reliance on the US greenback, Russian broadcaster RT reports.

China and Russia are drawing increasingly close amid a changing global landscape marked by President Donald Trump’s “America First” policy and his trade war which involves multiple battles with US allies and others alike.

Beijing and Moscow have been planning yuan bonds since 2016, but the plan has been postponed several times. According to RT, Russia now expects to issues its first sovereign debt in the Chinese currency, officially called renminbi, by the end of the year or early next year.

Both countries are concerned about “the dollar hegemony” and see the launch as a stepping stone in their bid to break the dominion up, the network said.

“It’s a step towards de-dollarization,” investment strategist with Premier BCS Anton Bakhtin told RT. “Secondly, it’s an additional bridge between us and the Chinese investors.”

As tensions escalate with the US, world countries are becoming increasingly worried about Washington using global reliance on the dollar as a weapon.

However, it will take much more time to fully shift away from the greenback and countries are looking for additional financial instruments as protection.

Both China and Russia have been stockpiling gold. Since December, the People’s Bank of China has reportedly added about 100 tonnes of gold to its reserves. Russia has bought 106 tonnes of the precious metal this year.

Over the past decade, Russia has more than quadrupled its gold reserves to more than 2,200 tonnes and now owns the fifth-largest stockpile by country. China’s reserves reportedly stand at more than 1,950 tonnes.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has taken a special interest in breaking up America’s “exorbitant privilege” in the words of former French President Charles de Gaulle through the dollar hegemony.

In June, Putin urged five major emerging economic powers – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, known as BRICS – to accelerate developing a system that could replace the dollar.

China, on the other hand, is on a campaign to make the renminbi a global reserve currency and its rising gold reserves could add to world confidence in the currency.

China’s launch of yuan-denominated Shanghai futures in March generated a lot of enthusiasm around the world.

Experts say the new futures contract traded on the Shanghai International Energy Exchange is now on course to become an alternative international oil benchmark not priced in dollars.

Source: Presstv

Chinese President Xi Jinping and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have agreed to cooperate in the spirit of multilateralism and free trade, with the visiting German leader vowing to expand investments in China, which is its largest trading partner.

The development came as the two leaders met and held discussions in Beijing on Friday, when Xi pointed to the common interests of China and Europe in “safeguarding the basic rules of (a)multilateral trading system” and called for jointly upholding what he referred to as “international fairness and justice,” China’s state broadcaster CCTV reported.

According to the report, Merkel further described Beijing-Berlin dialog and cooperation as extensive and expressed Germany’s satisfaction in sharing China’s achievements on multilateralism and pledged to promote people-to people and cultural exchanges.  

She further shared Xi’s perspective that unilateralism and protectionism also have adverse impact on Germany, insisting that trading partners should work to overcome differences and frictions through dialog and consultation.

The Chinese president then emphasized that as two of the world’s major economic powers with global influences, China and Germany should exhibit responsibility and “jointly uphold international fairness and justice,” the report added.

Xi further called for stronger cooperation between the two nations in emerging fields such as intelligent manufacturing, artificial intelligence, digitalization and 5G networks as well as new energy vehicles to jointly cultivate and explore future markets.

The report also cited Xi as saying that China is “accelerating the opening of its financial and service sectors” and would welcome Germany’s investment in such sectors, providing Berlin and others with newer opportunities.

Merkel, who is on a two-day tour of China at the invitation of Premier, Li Keqiang, further expressed Germany’s willingness to “play a constructive role in the development of EU-China relations” and to enhance communication and coordination with Beijing in the field of international affairs.

The visit came amid an escalating trade war between Washington and Beijing as China on Monday filed a complaint against the US at the World Trade Organization (WTO) after the Trump administration imposed new tariffs on billions of dollars of Chinese imports.

China’s Commerce Ministry declared in a statement that Beijing would defend its legal rights in accordance with the rules of the international body that limit the tariffs each country is allowed to charge.

The announcement came one day after the US began imposing 15-percent tariffs on a variety of Chinese products. In a retaliatory move, China also began imposing new duties on US crude oil.

This is while China’s Commerce Ministry further announced in a Thursday statement that trade negotiations aimed at ending a protracted tariff war with Washington are scheduled to resume in the US capital next month.

According to the statement, American and Chinese trade negotiators had earlier in the day held a phone conversation and agreed to meet “in early October” for another round of talks.

China’s Vice Premier Liu was further cited as saying that he spoke with US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on the phone and both parties agreed to hold what will be the thirteenth round of high-level economic talks in Washington at the beginning of next month.

The last round of the US-China trade negotiations was held in Shanghai in July, which was hailed as “constructive” but ended with no announcements.

Over the past year, the world’s two largest economies have been involved in a tense trade war, which escalated further on September 1 when both sides started implementing fresh levies on each other’s products.

Source: Presstv