Daily Archives: September 26, 2019

ISTANBUL Thedrone attackon Saudi Arabia oil facilities on September 14 is jolting the entire Middle East, the latest incident in a months-long battle between the Trump Administration and Iran. Yemens Houthi movement claimed credit for the devastating attack that shut down half of Saudi Arabias oil production. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blames Iran for the attack, while Iran has categoricallydenied it.

Lets not forget that the Trump Administration started this low-level war by withdrawing from the Iran nuclear accord. The UN Security Council voted unanimously to ratify the agreement, so the US stands in violation of UN resolutions and international law.

At the same time, in almost forgotten incidents, the powers that be in Washington, D.C., are reviving piracy on the high seas. For three months, the Trump Administration has subverted the law, instigated an armed ship seizure, and tried to bribe a ship captain in order to seize an Iranian oil tanker in the Mediterranean.

The United States has become a hi-tech Blackbeard.

On July 4, 30 British marinesstormedan Iranian oil tanker anchored off the coast of Gibraltar, a British colony located on the southernmost tip of Spain. United Kingdom and Gibraltar authorities, acting on behalf of the Trump Administration, claimed the ship was violating European Union sanctions by planning to deliver crude oil to Syria.

Those authorities had to bend themselves into pretzels to legally justify the seizure because the action, in fact, involved multiple violations of international law.

In retaliation, IranseizedBritish and United Arab Emirate oil tankers, and as of this writing, continues to hold them hostage. How did this mess begin?

Making it up as they go along

When the United States engages in piracy, it tries to make it look legal. The ship seizure near Gibraltar was clearly planned in Washington, asrevealedby the Spanish dailyEl Pais. The conservative government in Britain, even before the ascension of Boris Johnson as prime minister, willingly participated in Trumps tanker takeover.

Based on US intelligence, Gibraltar and British authorities claimed the ship was violating EU sanctions against Syria. A careful reading of thosesanctions, however, reveal that they prohibit exporting oilfromSyria, not delivering oiltoSyria. It also turns out that Gibraltar had no law allowing seizure of ships under the EU sanctions. So, on July 3, Gibraltarchanged its regulationsin order to legalize the seizure the following day.

Significantly, no EU country voiced support for the U.S./British piracy. Carl Bildt, former Swedish prime minister and now co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations,tweetedon July 7:

The legalities of the UK seizure of a tanker heading for Syria with oil from Iran intrigues me. One refers to EU sanctions against Syria, but Iran is not a member of EU. And EU as a principle doesnt impose its sanctions on others. Thats what the US does.

Bribery and chicanery

Brian Hook, the State Departments point man on Iran sanctions,emailedthe Iranian ships captain offering him several million dollars if he would send the tanker to a port where it could be seized on behalf of Washington.

Like a swaggering buccaneer of old, Hook offered a cash reward followed by a threat. With this money you can have any life you wish and be well-off in old age, Hook wrote in an email seen by theFinancial Times. If you choose not to take this easy path, life will be much harder for you.

When the captain, an Indian national, didnt respond to the email, the Trump Administration applied unilateral sanctions on him.

Meanwhile, the United States had secretly launched a cyber attack on the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, allegedly disabling key computer systems. Unnamed senior US officialsboastedtoThe New York Timesthat the cyber attack degraded Irans ability to disrupt civilian shipping. But it apparently didnt stop Iran from seizing a British oil tanker, the Stena Impero,in the Strait of Hormuz on July 19.

AnIranian officialadmitted the Stena Imperowas seized in response to the taking of the Iranian tanker. On September 16, Iran seized aUAE tankercarrying what it described as smuggled diesel.

The Mediterranean has apparently returned to the buccaneering days of old. If a country seizes one of your ships, you seize two of theirs. Well, shiver me timbers.

On August 16, Gibraltar ignored a last-minute U.S. legal plea and released the Iranian ship. On August 26, theship was soldto an unrevealed buyer and renamed the Adrian Darya 1. Pegleg Trump and his hardy band of pirates then proceeded to threaten oil brokers and port authorities throughout the region not to allow the oil to be unloaded.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeosaid, Weve made clear anyone who touches [the tanker], anyone who supports it . . . is at risk of receiving sanctions from the United States.

Remember, there is no legal authority whatsoever for Pompeos threats other than the unilateral US sanctions that are themselves a violation of UN Security Council resolutions. Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear agreement, which the UN Security Council had passed unanimously, and is thus violating international law.

On September 15, the Iranian foreign ministry announced that the Adrian Darya offloaded its cargo at an unnamed Mediterranean port, while western countries claim that country is Syria. As of this writing, Iran has not released the British or UAE tankers.

In the days of old, pirates fired canons and boarded ships with cutlasses clamped in their teeth. Today the Trump Administration does it with cyber attacks and stopping wire transfers. Iran has the right to ship its oil to willing buyers. Denying that right is piracy pure and simple.

Continue reading here:

Foreign Correspondent: Trump's piracy on the high seas - 48 Hills

If people in the touring business had been alive 200 years ago, they probably would have been pirates, says Baz Halpin, whos responsible for much of what youve seen in some of the most spectacular concert outings in recent years, including the past several Taylor Swift and Pink tours. Hes speaking of a maraud-and-run business that attracts itinerants who deal well with stress and high stakes, spending a few hours putting up a stage where a diva can unleash her high Cs before everyone returns to the high seas.

The Burbank complex that houses Silent House, the company Halpin founded 10 years ago, is the navigation bridge for these complex endeavors. Despite his analogy, its definitely never talk like a pirate day here. Gathered in a conference room, he and his three partners speak as responsible creative executives who are determined to take an unruly business made up primarily of disconnected freelancers and find structure and stability, building a new model for touring that puts a lot of the industrys formerly independent operators under one roof.

What were trying to do is streamline this concept of producing a tour by having this one-stop shop to produce the event, says Halpin, a native of Dublin who moved to the U.S. in 2010. Thats critical, because as everything gets more complicated, with more people, more technology and more vendors, its got to be so much more organized than it used to be.

His brainchild was to bring all the creative and business elements of touring together something that, as much as it might make intuitive sense to people in other businesses, has never been the way of the live music biz.

Says Halpin: [Silent House is a place] where you can go as an artist and say, I want you to design my tour, and I want you to produce my tour. This is how much money weve got. This is the promoter. Go. And I do see this becoming the way the business will go in the next 10 years. If Im a manager, I would rather go to one person and say, Hey, take care of it, and be comfortable in the knowledge that all those boxes are going to be ticked. But its a new concept. Its a really new concept.

Silent House is responsible for the aesthetics, logistics and financials of current or recent tours by the Jonas Brothers, Khalid and Childish Gambino, on top of a long roster of past or present clients thats included Katy Perry, Britney Spears, Halsey and Bruno Mars. The execs emphasize that they dont always have to fulfill every role on every tour they take on just that they can.

Some people come to us and say, Do the whole thing lighting design, set design, choreography, video content, produce it, everything, says Halpin. But some people will say, Hey, I just want production design, or choreography or whatever. And sometimes well just produce the show and not do any of the creative.

Laughs partner Tamlyn Wright: It sounds like a buffet. Adds Alex Reardon, another member of the key Silent House quartet: You can eat it all or just the roast beef.

All four of the principals in SilentHouse have more than two decades of working in the biz under their belts.

When I started almost 30 years ago, [touring] was a loss leader for album sales and it was a bunch of hairy roadies in a van throwing some lights around, Reardon says.

Halpin also strains to recall simpler times when he started out as a lighting director. My first tour was with Jethro Tull. I had two lighting trusses and one truck, one bus, 11 guys on the crew, and that was it. Now were doing 60-truck tours with 140 guys on the crew, and you have 20 to 25 guys running the show, operating lifts, confetti cues, inflatables, moving props, moving scenery.

Pink runs like a Broadway show, with props coming on and off stage every song, and dancer quick-changes. So many shows have robots, drones, inflatables and pyro. And all these things need to be factored into this duck that floats across the top of the water that seems so seamless and effortless, while this giant machine is churning underneath. Even 10 years ago there were just a handful of artists who did theatrical shows. Now everybody wants a spectacle.

Halpin notes that Silent House never outright says no to an artists ideas, but guides them gently toward whats feasible. Many put on what Halpin refers to as an arthouse touring show visually resplendent but without as many dancers and moving parts.

In a meeting it can sound like a great idea: I want to fly from there to there. But how many trucks is that going to add? How many bodies? Whats it going to do to the overall weight, or the sightlines? Because for that one gag, say its $50,000, hypothetically, for you to fly from there to there. But it might add $200,000 in associated costs that you dont necessarily see on that first piece of paper when you get a quote. For an artist to come off after working for six months and go, I sold out arenas why didnt I earn any money? thats not a result anybody wants.

At Silent House, the four partners are part of a 14-person team incorporating studio managers, project managers, illustrators, 3D and 2D draftsmen, renderers, communications and office managers who have the ability to oversee all the aesthetics of a show as well as logistics and finances.

Two years ago, Silent House moved to a Burbank campus where the execs also brought in as fellow renters some of their most frequent collaborators, including Blink TV and Earlybird Visual.

We have two video-content companies, a costume shop, a design-services facility, a film studio and a dance studio, Halpin says. (Leading a tour through the facilities, hes careful to call out and make sure there are no naked dancers undergoing fittings amid the array of desktop jockeys.)

We started out as designers, which isa very solitary sort of existence. So to be able to build a campus where its a collective group of people all pushing through the same goal and being able to share their highs and their lows, its good for the spirit.

Whats the workload? In a given year, Halpin estimates the company would do 30 tours and 100 unique performances meaning individual one-offs, like performances on award shows and maybe 12 to 14 television shows that we would either produce on or act as designers for.

Many are on the humbler side, despite Silent Houses rep for working on some of pop historys most monumental tours: We just did Jordan McGraw [as a one-off] on the Teen Choice Awards, and thats his first-ever performance.

Says partner Tamlyn Wright: Its all scalable. Ive got Lauren Daigle out on tour right now, who just hit big, from Christian to crossover artist. Right now shes got one truck, three buses, but its going to get bigger and bigger. So its not just the Taylors and the Pinks. Laurens entire evening costs as much as one song in Pinks show.

TV is a big part of Silent Houses business, and not just single performances on awards shows, but having a hand in the whole program. Halpin himself is a co-executive producer on the American Music Awards, the ACMs and the iHeart Radio Awards.

Wright, a broadcast specialist with three primetime Emmys to her name, recently did both the Radio Disney and Teen Choice awards shows and just got back from two weeks in China doing a music show for Mango TV, its Netflix equivalent, which she laughingly describes as Chinas cross between the VMAs and The Price Is Right, with this alien astronaut dance party theme inspired by a VMAs I designed several years ago.

Theyre also moving more into corporate gigs. Says Halpin: We did the Audi e-tron launch up in San Francisco, where you get to projection map on an iconic building thats 400 feet long and do a choreographed flight with a thousand Intel drones over a mile-and-a-half stretch over a steamboat thats coming in, and all this cool stuff that you wouldnt necessarily get to do in television or touring.

Those non-music experiences come in handy when its time to figure out whats possible next in the top tiers of touring, he adds.

As for whats on the horizon, Reardon is just about to blurt something when Halpin admonishes him, They dont call us Silent House for nothing.Will they do the next T-Swift tour? Ihope so, if shell have us, says the founder. Weve been with her for a while. I love all the new music.

Having all four partners together in the same room is a rarity, the last time being a good six months earlier. Youre getting an eclipse moment here, says Wright. Half the time were around the world, tapping into a workspace chat room for each show.

They put in all those hours trying to build transportable housing that reflects the vision of the artists who have to live in it, not their own, as architects.

Touring has moved to be the major source of most artists income; gone are the days that it was a promotion for an album, says Halpin. Theyre going to go spend eight months, a year, 18 months, maybe two years doing this show. Youre wanting to give a really specific identity to their essence, because theyre out there with what youve given them, and they have to do their best work in that space.

The four partners of Silent House:

BAZ HALPIN,President & CEO

Halpin moved from Ireland to England as he worked his way up in the business before heading to L.A. and founding the Silent House collective in 2010. Hes a go-to guy for Taylor Swifts tours, and some of his most spectacular recent work has been with Pink. I go back 14 years with Pink, and I hope theres another 14, and more. She is constantly, just as a person, pushing me to do better in my life. I think she is the most incredible human being forget about artist, performer, mother and now vintner.

TAMLYN WRIGHT,Production Designer & Partner

Wright has four Emmys to her credit for art directing the Oscars, Grammys and VMAs. Although awards shows have clearly been a specialty she recently turned the Teen Choice Awards into a beachside festival in Hermosa Beach shes branched out at Silent House to working on such tours as LaurenDaigles. Each of us has 20-plus years behind us, with different backgrounds, and we are able to kind of fill in the gaps and learn from each others know-how, she says.

CORY FITZGERALD,Creative Director, Lighting Designer & Partner

Specializing in lighting, Fitzgerald has worked with Bruno Mars, Beyonc, Justin Bieber, Jennifer Lopez, Janet Jackson, Gwen Stefani and Skrillex, among others. Recent notches in his belt range from designing Childish Gambinos set at Coachella, to PY1 Pyramid: Through the Echoes, a multimedia experience. Your friend from college can come up with the best flying hoverboard idea youve seen, but if you cant come back with a real budget, youre an idea generator.

ALEX REARDON,Creative Director,Designer & Partner

The son of an architect who started out in lighting design before moving into a wider range of creative production, the London-born Reardon is the one who came up with Silent Houses mantra of priorities: aesthetics, logistics and finance. This year, Khalid was definitely, from an artistic point of view, incredibly rewarding. And then I did a design for Tears for Fears, who I had worked for 25 years ago, and to see them selling out arenas again [in Europe] was so much fun.

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Silent House, Pink and Taylor Swift Tour Producer, Turns 10 in Style - Variety

A homemade submarine carrying more than five tons of cocaine was intercepted in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of South America, the US Coast Guard said.

The 39-foot-long (12 meter) vessel had previously been detected by maritime surveillance, according to a statement published Tuesday.

The Coast Guard boarded the self-propelled submersible on September 1 in international waters with the aid of the Colombian navy, the statement added.

On board, the Coast Guard discovered about 5.4 tons of cocaine, with a market value of more than $165 million.

Four suspected drug smugglers were arrested during the operation.

Along with planes and swift boats, South American drug cartels -- particularly from Colombia -- use somewhat rudimentary submarines to transport drugs to Mexico and on to the United States.

In July, the US Coast Guard announced the seizure of 13 tons of cocaine from multiple operations throughout Latin America.

Originally posted here:

High seas: US authorities seize five tons of cocaine from submarine - RTL Today

Humans live on land, but its the watery parts of the planet that dictate our fate. The frozen ice at the poles and in high mountains and the vast swath of ocean that covers nearly three-quarters of the planet mean this place is primarily earth in name only. The icedubbed the cryosphere by scientistsand the oceans provide sustenance and livelihoods for nearly 20 percent of the worlds people, and yet climate change is putting them all in danger, according to a new groundbreaking report.

On Wednesday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its latest shocking report on oceans and the cryosphere. Among the findings are that human-driven climate change is already leaving a mark everywhere from the glaciers on the tallest peaks to the bottom of the sea. Those changes will continue and could accelerate in the years ahead. How rapidly the shifts occur depends largely on when humanity starts to curtail its carbon pollution problem.

This report is unique because for the first time ever, the IPCC has produced an in-depth report examining the furthest corners of the Earth from the highest mountains and remote polar regions to the deepest oceans, Ko Barrett, the deputy assistant administrator at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and report vice chair, said in a press briefing. We have found that even, and especially in these places, human-caused climate change is evident.

Indeed, recent IPCC reports have chronicled climate change on land and what the world has to do to avert global warming in excess of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). Another group also recently put out a report on the extinction crisis. Together, that trio of reports paints a picture of humanity pushing the planet to the brink and highlights the solutions at our disposal to walk back from the edge. This report only adds more evidence for the urgent need for action.

Among the starkest findings is that the oceans are being bifurcated in two, a warming top and cut-off depths. The ocean has absorbed double the amount of heat over the past 25 years compared the previous 25 years. That added warmth has caused the top 200 meters (656 feet) of the seas to warm faster than the depths, a process that Nathan Bindoff, a report author and oceanographer from the University of Tasmania, called preferential warming.

Thats disrupting a process known as upwelling thats crucial for providing nutrients to the surface and oxygenating the water column. Imagine the ocean is like a Ferris wheel with cold water rising up, pushing warm water away until it eventually cools and sinks. But in the changing ocean, the lighter, warm water has basically knocked the Ferris wheel out of service for parts of the ocean, essentially acting as a cap, keeping cooler, dense water locked in place below.

The report notes that this stratification coupled with oxygen deprivation and ocean acidification is already in part causing California and Humboldt currentstwo of the most productive ecosystems in the worldto struggle. No matter the future scenario, this stratification and other impacts of climate change, such as rising temperatures and dips in plankton and other sea creatures that form the base of the food chain, the ocean is projected to transition to unprecedented conditions over the rest of the 21st century, the report found.

The dangerous changes to the ocean dont even begin to address the impacts of rising seas. Under all climate change scenarios, coastal areas will see what the report euphemistically calls extreme sea level eventsthat would be floods to you and methat were once once-in-a-century will become annual occurrences by centurys end. But devastating effects will impact unnumbered people far sooner.

Many low-lying megacities and small islands (including SIDS) are projected to experience historical centennial events at least annually by 2050, the report authors wrote.

This is in part why low-lying island nations could become uninhabitable by the 2050s as the quickening drumbeat of sea level rise pollutes their fragile freshwater aquifers and storm surge swallows peoples homes. Even wave heights are projected to change, with the biggest waves climbing higher due to sea level rise and shifting wind patterns.

If the hotter, more acidic oceans sound terrifying, then the changes to ice are just as daunting. The report chronicles the rate of ice loss at both poles and in the high peaks around the world. When comparing the period of 2007-2016 to 1997-2006, the report shows Greenlands ice loss has doubled while Antarcticas has tripled, with all that extra melted ice pouring into the ocean and raising sea levels. The report also shows ice and snowpack are disappearing on more inhabited landmasses, reducing water availability for people living down valley. In a particularly stark finding, the report indicates that up to 90 percent of low elevation mountain snowpack could disappear if carbon emissions continue to rise unabated. Under a more hopeful scenario where humans start drawing down emissions by 2030, only 10 to 40 percent of low elevation mountain snowpack will disappear.

And thats where the report follows in its forebearers footsteps most closely. While it paints a dire picture of the future, it also highlights that we have choices. And the fate of a huge swath of humanity hangs in the balance. Coastal populations are expected to boom in the coming decades, and the report estimates that 1 billion people could call low-lying coastal areas home by 2050. Another 740 million to 840 million people are projected to live in mountainous areas along with 4 million people living in the Arctic. All told, thats 20 percent of the worlds future population of 9 billion people.

The report touts the benefits of offshore wind and wave energy as a way oceans can play a role in helping mitigate climate change. The high seas themselves can also sequester carbon, though Barrett warned that oceans will eventually take up less and less carbon dioxide as they warm. Plus all that extra carbon pollution contributes to ocean acidification, so its probably best to not rely on them to save our asses.

Adaptation planning is also crucial since even in the best scenario, glaciers will still melt, seas will still rise, and, well, you get my drift. The report argues we need more cooperation, including with indigenous groups who can tap traditional knowledge, and to foster ecosystems that can protect us. In some cases, people may need to relocate to higher ground or to locations where water resources are more plentiful, which will again require everyone to cooperate.

The world has shown little appetite to take a collaborative approach to these types of adaptation projects let alone drawing down emissions to-date, but the tide will have to turn if humanity is to have any chance of staying above water.

Original post:

'Unprecedented Conditions' Will Rule the Oceans This Century, Striking New Report Finds - Gizmodo

Talk of life on the high seas often conjures up images of brute lawlessness and cutthroat ruggedness. Lying, as they do, beyond the sobering reach of civilisation, international waters are, in the collective imagination, an environment where each person or vessel is to themselves, and where might definitely is right.

The issue of Tunisian and Gozitan fishers clashing over the dolphin fish (lampuki) fisheries in the north-west of the islands has recently been the subject of several media reports. It is not, however, a new phenomenon. Even as far back as 2002, for example, there had been calls by interested fishers for the Maltese and Tunisian governments to take immediate steps to stem the problem.

What is now obvious is that it was not to be, and therefore several years later the problem persists. Tunisian fishers are consistently reported to plunder fish off the Gozitans fishing aggregating devices (FADS), popularly known as kannizzati in Maltese. While fishing off the floats is not strictly illegal, there have also been reports of fishers actually stealing or even destroying the Gozitan floats outright.

Gozitan crews have described in particularly vivid terms the belligerent behaviour of some Tunisian boats and their crews. Vessels have been reported to actively fend off Gozitan fishing craft, preventing them from accessing their own kannizzati just as other Tunisian boats fished off those very same floats.

In extreme cases, Tunisian boats are said to have attempted to ram Gozitan vessels and to have harassed them very savagely, with disturbing reports of very near misses during ramming manoeuvres, and of fearsome Tunisian crews brandishing machetes and petrol bombs.

Government is of course fully aware of the challenges and threats that our fishers have to face on a daily basis in the course of their work. We never have, and never will, shirk our responsibility for protecting our fisheries and the livelihoods of our fishers. I have personally had discussions with the armed forces, and I have been assured that all necessary measures are being taken, within the parameters of international law, to protect our fishers.

The fact remains that within the Maltese fishing zone, or up to twenty-five miles from shore, the AFM can and does intervene effectively. Beyond that, however, our powers are limited by international law. This is not to say that we intend to sit on the fence, and indeed finding a long-term solution to this matter sits up there among our topmost priorities. Nevertheless it is clear that, objectively, this can only be achieved within the contexts of international agreements and forums.

Government is considering taking the issue to the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean (GFCM), the regional fisheries management organization. The GFCM, of which Malta and Tunisia are contracting parties, is the body in charge of fishing in the Mediterranean Sea. It should, in my view, be the main forum wherein to make our case with the Tunisian authorities, who alone have the clout to rein in any wrongdoers.

It does, in fact, appear that concerns had been raised with Tunisia in 2002, and that these had resulted in the Tunisian authorities temporarily putting a stop to the poaching. There exists, therefore, every reason to believe that diplomacy and negotiations with the Tunisian authorities in the context of the GFCM could represent a way forward and out of the present impasse, but we must ensure that this time round the results will be permanent.

The European Union too is a contracting party in the GFCM, and Malta has raised the matter with the European Commission. The EC has taken the view that a spatial dispute does indeed exist between Maltese and Tunisian fishers on lampuki fishing, and is therefore expected to raise the issue in the next meeting of the GFCM in Greece.

I believe that now is the time for every effort to be made on our part to present a united front, together with our EU friends, and to engage constructively with the Tunisian authorities in the quest for a permanent resolution of the issue. It seems to me that a means to this end could be a GFCM-brokered and regulated FAD management plan acceded to by Malta and Tunisia. This would facilitate the identification of the floats and regulate the fishing practices of the two countries.

I wish to assure all fishers that I am well aware of the hardships and threats that they have to face when they are out at sea. It is, therefore, with the utmost responsibility that I reiterate my own and governments commitment to their well-being, and I shall not rest in my endeavours to find the best possible avenues for helping and supporting them in their work. I am convinced that only possible solution to the current problem is clearly to negotiate an agreement with the Tunisian authorities within the GFCM, with the help of the European Commission. This is what I will be working towards in the coming weeks.

I strongly believe that the focus should be on seeking common ground with the Tunisian authorities with a view to finding a workable arrangement that both countries can agree to in a spirit of neighbourly cooperation. The solution definitely does not lie in confrontation, as we ultimately rely on the Tunisian authorities, and on them alone, to regulate the agreement from their end, and to weed out any wrongdoers. It is the only way to make the international waters in the north-west a safer place, and to ensure that our fishers go there to work, not fight.

Clint Camilleri is the Parliamentary Secretary for Agriculture and Fisheries

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Life on the high seas | Clint Camilleri - MaltaToday

A green sea turtle named Today is on the mend and going back home!

As part of the NBC News "Climate in Crisis" series, NBC's Kerry Sanders paid a visit to the Loggerhead Marinelife Center in Juno Beach, Florida, to see how climate change, erosion, development and polluted oceans have affected sea turtles, fundamental animals within the marine ecosystem.

Although millions of sea turtles once swam the high seas, scientists now estimate that there are less than a million of the reptiles remaining in the world and all of them are considered threatened or endangered.

Many sea turtles end up getting caught in plastic waste or eating some form of plastic garbage, whether it's a fishing line, drinking straw, plastic bag or pieces of microplastic, because they mistake them for food. Their plastic encounters can cause physical injuries or health problems.

Loggerhead Marinelife Center is on the front lines of the conservation effort to protect and save the dwindling sea turtle population. The center took another small step in healing endangered turtles when they released a 265-pound turtle nicknamed Today back into the ocean on TODAY Tuesday, who was brought in when she became entangled in monofilament.

You can track Today's progress on the Loggerhead Marinelife Center website to see how she's doing and how she has responded to therapy. The sea turtle is over 25 years old and is expected to live well into her 80s if she remains healthy.

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How to track the sea turtle named after the TODAY show - Today.com

25 September 2019

This area is a simmering cauldron for conflict between China and its neighbours and the US. Mark J Valencia makes sense of the situation.

The South China Sea disputes are complex and confusing.Here are the key questions answered.

China and Taiwan claim sovereignty over all of the Spratly features (rocks sometimes called islands) based on history, discovery, usage, administration and for some effective control. Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia also claim and occupy some of them. All these claims have serious weaknesses in modern international law, which requires continuous, effective administration and control, and acquiescence by other claimants. Chinas sovereignty claims are just as valid or invalid as those of the other claimants.

China also claims unspecified rights within a nine-dash-line historic claim encompassing much of the South China Sea (see map right). But an international arbitration panel set up under the auspices of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) to hear a Philippines complaint ruled in 2016 that any such claim is contrary to the Convention and without lawful effect. Moreover, it ruled that none of the features in the Spratlys are legal islands and thus are not entitled to claims of 200-nautical-mile Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) or continental shelves. #

Regarding Chinas claims to construction on and occupation of several rocks which were underwater at high tide, the panel ruled that the latter are not entitled to a territorial sea (the surrounding 12 nautical miles). China rejected the entire arbitration process and its decision. All parties plus Brunei and Indonesia claim EEZs from their mainland and some of these claims overlap. All also claim, or are entitled to claim, extended continental shelves and these claims are likely to overlap as well.

The Paracels are a separate island group to the northwest of the Spratlys claimed by China, Taiwan and Vietnam. But they have been occupied by China since 1974 when it took them by force from then South Vietnam.

Perhaps the most dangerous disputes are those over sovereignty of the features and their 12-nautical-mile territorial seas.Governments are obligated and domestically pressured to defend the sovereignty of their national territory.

The overlap of EEZs and Chinas historic claim results in disputes over fishing. On 9 June, there was a collision between two fishing boats in the Philippines EEZ one a Peoples Republic of China-flagged vessel and one a Philippines-flagged fishing boat, provoking much popular fury in the Philippines.

The main dispute over petroleum resources is due to the overlap of Chinas historic claim with the EEZ claims of Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam. China has persuaded foreign oil companies not to explore in disputed waters and Vietnam has tried to prevent Chinese exploration in its EEZ.

The US and China are engaged in a struggle for dominance in the South China Sea.The other Southeast Asian claimants are caught in the middle and trying to hedge between the two. According to Admiral Harry Harris, who was the US navys Pacific Commander: Beijing is using its military and economic power to coerce its neighbours and erode the free and open international order.

Moreover, the US and its supporters assert that China is destabilizing the region by its island building and militarization of its occupied features, and its illegal maritime claims and increasingly assertive actions to enforce them.

But from Chinas perspective, it is the US that is destabilizing the region with its forward deployed military, its shows of force including its freedom of navigation operations (FONOPs) and its intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance probes against China in its near shore waters.

The US has apparently made it its mission to prevent China from intimidating its fellow claimants and to interpret and enforce UNCLOS there.However, that US position is weakened by the fact that it alone among the major maritime powers has refused to ratify UNCLOS.

China and the US often exchange accusations that the other is militarizing the South China Sea. Militarization means to give a military character to or to adapt for military use. Under this definition, all the claimants to and occupiers ofthe Spratly features militarized them years ago. Indeed, all have stationed military personnel there and have built airstrips and harbours that can accommodate military aircraft and vessels.

But China points out that the US unlike China already has military places if not bases bordering the Sea in the Philippines and Thailand and more recently in Malaysia and Singapore for its intelligence flights targeting Chinas submarines.The US has also increased its military presence in the region as well as its FONOPs challenging Chinas claims.China sees these as gunboat diplomacy and argues that it is only preparing to defend itself.

There is hope that China and its rival regional claimants can come up with a formal Code of Conduct that would prevent conflicts and contain incidents.To do so, they will have to overcome significant disagreements on the definition of the area to be covered by the Code, its legal status and the method of enforcement if any.

But the China-US struggle for dominance in the South China Sea is part of a more fundamental contest that is unlikely to fade away and may well expand and even explode.

The risk of dangerous incidents is growing. The recent near-collision between the US warship Decatur and a Chinese warship is only the most recent in a series of near misses.

A series of similar dangerous military incidents between the US and the Soviet Union was a stimulus for their 1972 ground-breaking Agreement on the Prevention of Incidents on and over the High Seas.Perhaps the time has come for a similar US-China agreement.

The most likely scenario is continued struggle by China and the US for dominance in the South China Sea and to win over the hearts and minds of Southeast Asian claimants.

This article is fromthe September-October 2019 issueof New Internationalist.You can access the entire archive of over 500 issues with a digital subscription.Subscribe today

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Who is militarizing the South China Sea? - New Internationalist

This week the supreme court ruled that the governments prorogation of parliament had been unlawful and so was void and of no effect. Lexically, the kerfuffle was most interesting for the surge in popularity of the hitherto obscure word justiciable.

Justice, from the Norman French justicer, was originally a verb as well as a noun, meaning to bring to trial or to punish. (From Latin ius: a right or law.) What was justiciable, from the 15th century, was what could properly be decided at court, or what was subject to a particular jurisdiction. Crimes on the high seas, 19th-century legal scholars wrote, were justiciable only in the country to which the vessel belonged, and so forth, and the people it was proper to try in courts were themselves called justiciables.

The government had argued that its decision to prorogue was not justiciable because it was an exercise of its prerogative power. The supreme court, as though speaking to a child, reminded it: The courts have exercised a supervisory jurisdiction over the lawfulness of acts of the Government for centuries. Court-watchers will be eager to discover whether, in due course, Boris Johnson personally might become a justiciable.

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Boris Johnson's actions are justiciable but what does that mean? - The Guardian

Key Point: Reinventing America's navy, in short, could involve reshuffling priorities for future acquisitions, tactics, and operations.

Here's a thought experiment: would America build the U.S. Navy currently plying the seven seas if it were starting from scratch? Color me skeptical. If not, what kind of navy would it build, and how can we approximate that ideal in light of budgetary constraints, a slew of legacy platforms that can't simply be scrapped and replaced, and an organizational culture and history that frown on revolutionary change?

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For the idea behind this exercise, a tip of the hat goes to Shawn Brimley and Paul Scharre of the Center for a New American Security or CNAS, who ran an item over at Foreign Policy last May wondering how the United States would reboot the armed forces as a whole. Brimley and Scharre dangle their query out there with a few remarks about organizational wiring diagrams and personnel policy. They hint at answers without quite giving them. They want to start a rumble within officialdom. In a novus ordo seclorum, would we create, say, a separate U.S. Air Force, or institute recruitment and retention policies reminiscent of conscription? Such matters are worth pondering.

Last week, writing in a similar vein, Washington Post columnist and sometime naval enthusiast George Will asked what kind of navy the nation needs, and wants. That sounds like a technical question. And it is -- in part. Is the U.S. Navy outfitted with the right types and numbers of ships, aircraft, and armaments?

Yet Will cuts to the heart of the matter. At bottom this is less a question about gadgetry or high-seas tactics than about national purposes and power. Nations, that is, amass military power to fulfill larger purposes. Martial strength helps advance their interests, ward off danger, and uphold their ideals. But does a listless American republic, "demoralized by squandered valor in Iraq and Afghanistan, and dismayed in dramatically different ways by two consecutive commanders in chief," even want to project power overseas?

If so, where, and to what ends? Today, maintains Will, "cascading dangers are compelling Americans to think afresh about something they prefer not to think about at all -- foreign policy. What they decide that they want will define the kind of nation they want the United States to be. This abstract question entails a concrete one: What kind of navy do Americans want?"

Good question. There's a canned quality to what-if exercises like this one. Two basic approaches come to mind. One, there's the tabula rasa. You could posit that the United States is only now rising to regional or world power, and thus is making itself a sea power for the first time. Such a scenario would be a throwback to 1883, when the nation started constructing its first steam-driven battle fleet. Americans could start from first principles, asking themselves what they wanted to accomplish in the world and what kind of naval might their republic needed to accomplish it.

Or, two, you could stipulate that the United States somehow made itself into the world power it is, blessed and burdened by its current array of foreign alliances and commitments, without ever having built an imposing navy to bind such arrangements together. The challenge in this unlikely scenario would be to field a fleet able to uphold commitments to Japan, Australia, NATO, and so forth. The demands of these two constructs are starkly different. For the fun of it, and to avoid a War and Peace-length discourse -- a zero-based look at U.S. foreign policy would consume page after page -- let's go with the latter. What kind of navy should Washington build to discharge today's commitments if starting afresh?

To further simplify the problem, let's accept the geopolitical assessment set forth in the 2007 U.S. Maritime Strategy, titled A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower. In the strategy the chieftains of the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard pronounce the Western Pacific and greater Indian Ocean the primary theaters for U.S. marine endeavor. They pledge to stage credible combat power in the Indo-Pacific for the foreseeable future, using forward-deployed forces to execute a variety of missions. Enforcing freedom of the seas and skies in peacetime, deterring war or winning it, and rendering humanitarian or disaster relief rank high on the sea services' to-do list.

How to proceed? When contemplating grand enterprises, you seldom go wrong starting with Carl von Clausewitz. Clausewitz urges statesmen and commanders to take a tour d'horizon before picking up the sword. To "discover" how many and what type of resources they need to marshal, they need to evaluate the adversary's and their own political aims. What does each belligerent want, and how much does it want it? Strategic overseers should survey the opponent's "strength and situation," appraising everything from geography to military potential to morale. They should "gauge the character and abilities" of the opponent's government and people, and of their own. And they should evaluate the "political sympathies" of third parties, estimating the likely impact of military action on these prospective allies, enemies, or bystanders.

Clausewitz's discovery process is meant for discrete conflicts, but it's a serviceable template for long-term strategy as well. Applied to the Indo-Pacific rimlands, who are the likely competitors, what are their long-term interests and aspirations, and how much are they prepared to invest in fulfilling these aspirations? How can Washington sway them in favor of American policy? What advantages and liabilities does prospective antagonists' offshore geography present, how much and what type of military potential do they boast, and is their warmaking potential likely to wax, wane, or stagnate over time? Are their people and government well suited to long-term strategic competition? And what impact will the competition have on third parties? Will it help the United States firm up its alliances or woo new partners? Or will it erode ties in the region?

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Sizing up the strategic surroundings, then, represents the beginning of wisdom. Now let's neck down to the operational and hardware levels. How can a reinvented U.S. Navy achieve its goals amid Indo-Pacific surroundings? For insight let's ask that scion of Edwardian England, sea-power theorist Julian S. Corbett. Corbett partitions navies into the "battle fleet," "cruisers," and the "flotilla." The battle fleet dukes it out with enemy fleets for command of vital waters. Thrashing the enemy frees the cruisers and flotilla -- swarms of lighter, less heavily armed, cheaper craft -- to fan out in large numbers, controlling seagoing traffic at important junctures on the map. Command also empowers a navy to blockade enemy shores, land troops, or otherwise project force from the sea. These too are jobs for cruisers and the flotilla.

And they're the crucial jobs. Harnessing the sea for our purposes while keeping enemies from interfering is the point of maritime strategy. Battle, then, is only an enabler in marine warfare -- not an end in itself. "Capital ships" constituting the battle fleet thus occupy a curious place in navies. They enjoy most of the sex appeal, festooned as they are with radars, missiles, and guns. And their efforts are indispensable to success. Enemy sea power does have to be expelled from the expanses that matter, or at least reduced to near-impotence. But at the same time Corbett insists that the battle line's chief function is to protect unsexy cruisers and flotilla ships at their "special work." Though celebrated in legend and song, then, fleet engagements are merely a means to that happy end. Savvy commanders refuse to fight Trafalgar- or Leyte-like actions for their own sake.

This was true in Corbett's day, but what about our own? Seeking out the enemy fleet for a major action at the outset of a conflict -- Corbett's preferred method for settling affairs -- may avail a dominant navy little in today's strategic setting. That's because incapacitating or sinking an enemy fleet no longer represents a sure route to success, as it did during the age of Corbett a century ago. No longer is sea power all about fleets. For instance, arsenals of anti-ship missiles and aircraft can strike hundreds of miles from a local defender's coasts -- shaping events on the high seas even if no surface fleet gets underway. Even if our hypothetical U.S. Navy, say, knocks China's shiny new fleet out of a conflict, American task forces must still operate under the shadow of shore-based sea power. Disabling Chinese airfields or mobile anti-ship-missile batteries threatens to be harder and more exasperating than fighting a concentrated fleet.

Corbett's Royal Navy never faced barrages of Imperial German anti-ship ballistic or cruise missiles lofted its way. The Corbettian playbook for maritime warfare remains relevant -- but naval commanders should flip to the pages in his book Some Principles of Maritime Strategy that explore how to start campaigns from a position of weakness. If it proves impossible to win command of the commons through a decisive encounter at the outset, what then? Well, a U.S. Navy optimized for an anti-access environment would deploy assets to eliminate the opponent's navy (or, second best, bottle it in port) while trying to nullify the land-based component of enemy sea power. It would deny the opponent his goals as a first step.

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Expert: Here Is How I Would Rebuild the U.S. Navy from Scratch - The National Interest Online

The Actors Fund will present a benefit reading of Charles Buschs Tony-nominated play The Tale of the Allergists Wife November 18 at 7:30 PM at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre.

The evening will star Busch in the title role, which was originally played by Tony winner Linda Lavin. Lavin will play the role of Frieda, the part created by the late Shirl Bernheim, with original cast members Michele Lee, Tony Roberts, and Anil Kumar in their original roles. Original director Lynne Meadow will helm.

In 2017, I attended The Actors Fund Gala honoring Hal Prince, and after that evening, I was inspired to organize something special to support The Actors Fund, Lavin said. I called up Charles with the idea of revisiting his perfect play. I loved playing the role of Marjorie, but I thought for this special one-night event, it would be marvelous having our playwright, Charles Busch, who has had a long award-winning career playing female roles, play her. So I urged him if we were going to do this, he had to play the role of Marjorie as he had found that character as a performer before he even expanded it into a play. I had played Frieda at The Red Barn Studio Theatre in Wilmington, North Carolina (the theatre my husband Steve Bakunas and I created), and thought it would be fitting and exciting for me to play it again. It honestly feels like we were all together just doing this play the other day, and I cant believe we are lucky enough to come together and do this one more timeled again by the incredible Lynne Meadowto benefit such a wonderful and important organization.

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Originally produced by Manhattan Theatre Club, Carole Shorenstein Hays, Stuart Thompson, and Douglas S. Cramer, The Tale of the Allergist's Wife ran November 2, 2000September 15, 2002, playing 25 previews and 777 performances. The show received Tony nominations for Best Play, Best Actress in a Play (Lavin), and Best Featured Actress in a Play (Lee).

For tickets and more information, visit ActorsFund.org.

Busch has been a special guest performer on Playbill Travels Broadway on the High Seas cruises. Cabins are now on sale for Broadway in the Great Northwest, Playbill Travels first domestic cruise featuring Kate Baldwin, Tedd Firth, Christopher Fitzgerald, Aaron Lazar, and Faith Prince (April 26May 4, 2020), and for Broadway on the Mediterranean (August 31September 7, 2020), featuring Audra McDonald, Will Swenson, Gavin Creel, Caissie Levy and Lindsay Mendez, and for Broadway on the Nile (December 27, 2020January 7, 2021), with performers soon to be announced. To book a suite or stateroom, call Playbill Travel at 866-455-6789 or visit PlaybillTravel.com.

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Charles Busch Will Star in The Tale of the Allergist's Wife to Benefit Actors Fund - Playbill.com