Monthly Archives: March 2020

Cruise passengers return to ships at the Port Zante terminal in St. Kitts.

Mariakray/iStockPhoto / Getty Images

Almost 30 million vacationers chose fun on the high seas in 2019, but does the outbreak of coronavirus now make cruise ships a travel pariah? With COVID-19 cases in 80 countries and counting, the floating village of a large ship seems like a prime place for the virus to flourish.

The Diamond Princess, which was the first ship quarantined due to coronavirus, had 705 people contract the disease (six of whom died) out of 3,711 passengers and crew.

The first line of defence for passenger health and safety and a standard on large cruise ships is an on-board medical team. Ships from major cruise lines have a minimum of one doctor and two nurses who are on call 24 hours a day and have experience in emergency, family and internal medicine and are often board-certified in multiple countries.

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Ships have also embraced every doctors mantra for reducing the spread of disease: clean hands. Their answer is the prevalence of hand sanitizer, placing dispensers in multiple public areas from dining rooms to casinos; entry into these spaces comes with a cool dollop of anti-bacterial gel.

But an even better practice when in close quarters with hundreds of crew and passengers is the real thing: Wash your hands! Use soap and water for 30 seconds frequently throughout the day, and always after using the washroom and before meals. On many ships, hand-wash stations are available just outside dining rooms.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than half of those who typically become ill on a cruise ship are over the age of 65 and are often already diagnosed with respiratory illness, seasickness, injuries from falling or gastrointestinal illness. Diseases like COVID-19 are rare.

Additional tips for keeping illness away wash your hands every time you return to your stateroom, cover your face with a tissue when you cough or sneeze and dispose of it, drink water to avoid dehydration, use sunscreen, get your beauty sleep and take it easy on the multiple, often-rich courses offered at mealtime.

Last tip: If you feel unwell, isolate yourself in your room and contact the medical team. It may just be the sniffles or seasickness, but they are there to inform and diagnose if needed.

A Japanese infectious disease specialist has castigated his government's handling of quarantine on a coronavirus-stricken cruise ship, saying it was run by 'bureaucrats' who stoked the crisis by failing to follow basic protocols. Reuters

Need some travel advice or have a question about life on the road? Send your questions to personalconcierge@globeandmail.com.

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Ask a travel expert: How do I keep healthy while on a cruise ship? - The Globe and Mail

Looking at options trading activity among components of the Russell 3000 index, there is noteworthy activity today in UnitedHealth Group Inc (Symbol: UNH), where a total volume of 36,586 contracts has been traded thus far today, a contract volume which is representative of approximately 3.7 million underlying shares (given that every 1 contract represents 100 underlying shares). That number works out to 62.4% of UNH's average daily trading volume over the past month, of 5.9 million shares. Especially high volume was seen for the $300 strike call option expiring March 06, 2020, with 3,104 contracts trading so far today, representing approximately 310,400 underlying shares of UNH. Below is a chart showing UNH's trailing twelve month trading history, with the $300 strike highlighted in orange:

SeaWorld Entertainment Inc. (Symbol: SEAS) saw options trading volume of 8,440 contracts, representing approximately 844,000 underlying shares or approximately 58.5% of SEAS's average daily trading volume over the past month, of 1.4 million shares.Especially high volume was seen for the $22 strike put option expiring April 17, 2020, with 1,102 contracts trading so far today, representing approximately 110,200 underlying shares of SEAS. Below is a chart showing SEAS's trailing twelve month trading history, with the $22 strike highlighted in orange:

And Quest Diagnostics, Inc. (Symbol: DGX) options are showing a volume of 6,780 contracts thus far today. That number of contracts represents approximately 678,000 underlying shares, working out to a sizeable 58.1% of DGX's average daily trading volume over the past month, of 1.2 million shares.Particularly high volume was seen for the $125 strike call option expiring March 20, 2020, with 992 contracts trading so far today, representing approximately 99,200 underlying shares of DGX. Below is a chart showing DGX's trailing twelve month trading history, with the $125 strike highlighted in orange:

For the various different available expirations for UNH options, SEAS options, or DGX options, visit StockOptionsChannel.com.

Today's Most Active Call & Put Options of the S&P 500

The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.

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Notable Thursday Option Activity: UNH, SEAS, DGX - Nasdaq

Coming from the highlands and to experiencing island life has given him a totally new perception of life especially travelling the high seas by boat.

Manasa Yavala with the Year 11 students of Ratu Finau Secondary School in Lau. Sitting second from left is his younger sister, Vika Yavala.

Living in the island is amazing, says Manasa Yavala.

Mr Yavala, who got his first rural posting to Ratu Finau Secondary School in Tubou, Lakeba, Lau, early this year, says the experience was something he never expected.

He is originally from Narukunibua Village in Namosi.

Coming from the highlands and to experiencing island life has given him a totally new perception of life especially travelling the high seas by boat.

Mr Yavala was accompanied by his father Joe and younger sister Vika, who now joins Ratu Finau Secondary School.

They left Suva for Lakeba on the MV Brianna franchise last month.

He said they spent two nights and a day at sea before reaching Lakeba.

This is his fourth year teaching Applied Technology. He spent three years at Marist Brothers High School before he was posted to Lau.

Mr Yavala said he was shocked when he received his new posting, but happy at the same time.

This is my first rural posting, he said.

Im happy because this is the first time I visited islands in Lau.

I enjoyed the sights, people and the island itself, its so beautiful.

Mr Yavala said he was welcomed by the teachers and the principal of the school.

I only have five students in my class, so theres not much to worry about.

He is teaching Technical Drawing, Basic Technology and Applied Technology for Year Nine to Year 13 students.

Manasa Yavala (left), with fellow teachers of Ratu Finau Secondary School in Lau.

The school is located away from the village on a hill, looking down at the sea, he said.

Here I go to mass every Sunday in Tubou, and last week was my first Ash Wednesday away from my loved ones.

The school has internet access where Mr Yavala gets the chance to update himself with the news and also reach out to his family members through social media platforms.

Mr Yavala was homesick during his first month.

He said living on the island includes social and geographical isolation, transportation problems and some community challenges.

Manasa Yavala and his father, Joe Yavala.

I love the food here, we eat seafood every day. It took me time to learn how to eat crabs.

Mr Yavala said now he was able to save money compared to his years of teaching in Suva.

Edited by Selita Bolanavanua

Feedback: lusiana.tuimaisala@fijisun.com.fj

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From the Mountain To The Sea: Highlander Teacher, Says Island Life Amazes Him - Fiji Sun Online

This weekend, Seattles fishing fleet will be honored in the 92nd annual Blessing of Fleet to mark the start of the 2020 fishing season.

The event, happening Sunday, March 8 at Fishermens Terminal, will bring together crews, friends, family, and the greater community to send the fishing fleet off with a ceremony and blessing from Pastor Elise Scot of Ballard First Lutheran Church.

Along with wishing them a good season and a safe return to their loved ones after a summer on the high seas, the blessing also remembers those who have lost their lives in this dangerous profession, the King County Council stated in a press release about the event. Since 1988, the Seattle Fishermens Memorial at Seattles Fishermens Terminal has served as a tribute to the lives of its women and men lost at sea. Last year, the Dutch Harbor-based Scandies Rose sunk off the coast of Kodiak. Five crew members perished, many of whom had connections to the Puget Sound region. Just two members survived the tragedy.

The ceremony will happen at 2pm sharp at the Central Plaza at Fishermens Terminal.

File photo of a previous years Blessing of the Fleet

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92nd Annual Blessing of the Fleet is this Sunday - My Ballard

Our planet is always changing, but a scientific study claims that the Earth was once a waterworld that had no continents. Wait. Does that mean that Waterworld was a documentary? The study said that the Earth was covered in vast oceans 3.2 billion years ago. Wait. Does that mean that Waterworld a time-travel movie?

A new study titled Limited Archaean continental emergence reflected in an early Archaean 18O-enriched ocean published Monday in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Nature Geoscience brought evidence pointing out that ancient Earth was a waterworld. Dont tell Kevin Costner, he is still probably having nightmares from 1995.

Two researchers from the University of Colorado-Boulder and Iowa State University noted an ancient piece of marine sediment in the arid inland of the Western Australian outback. Not exactly the place you would expect to find marine sediment.

RELATED: Scientists Found Breathable Oxygen In Another Galaxy For The First Time Ever

The Aussie area where the remnants of the ancient ocean were found is called Panorama. In the outback, geologists discovered leftovers in the oceanic crust from a time when the entire planet was covered in water.

Scientists examined 100 sediment samples from the Panorama, and it looked a lot like the oceans from billions of years ago. Researchers believe that 3.2 billion years ago that the composition of the oceans contained more oxygen-18 than oxygen-16, the latter of which is more common in the modern ocean and is a slightly lighter isotope. Oxygen-16 is a lighter isotope than the heavier Oxygen-18.

Though these mass differences seem small, they are super sensitive, said Boswell Wing, study co-author and an associate professor in the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. Theres nothing in what weve done that says you cant have teeny, micro-continents sticking out of the oceans.

We just dont think that there were global-scale formation of continental soils like we have today, Wing added.

The belief is that there were no continents 3.2 billion years ago, and that the formation of continents absorbed the oxygen-18 isotopes from the oceans. Scientists believe that there were some land masses, but only small-sized islands on Earth, which likely formed 4.5 billion years ago.

RELATED: Listen To The Crazy Laser Gun Noise That Happens When You Drop Ice Down A Super Deep Hole In Antarctica

Our work doesnt mean there was zero dry land, just that it must have been much, much smaller in extent than today, with only small island chains emergent above the ocean, said Benjamin W. Johnson, an assistant professor of geological and atmospheric sciences at Iowa State. This value is different than the modern ocean in a way that can be explained most easily by a lack of emergent continental crust.

There are no samples of really ancient ocean water lying around, but we do have rocks that interacted with that seawater and remembered that interaction, said Johnson, who is the studys other co-author.

The study gives scientists hope that other planets could evolve into water worlds that could sustain life.

If the Earth was a water world for the first quarter or so of its history, then perhaps other Earth-like planets elsewhere in the galaxy would undergo a similar evolution, Johnson said.

via GIPHY

The study alleges that tectonic plates pushed the massive land masses up to create continents.

Lets hope that the Earth doesnt become a waterworld again, fighting for five limes on the high seas doesnt look fun.

RELATED: Earth Is Getting A New Moon But We Cant Land On It

[LiveScience]

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Ancient Earth Was A Waterworld Covered In Oceans That Had No Continents According To A New Study - BroBible

New Delhi: The UN Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), which approached the Supreme Court to be made amicus curiae in a case that has challenged the validity of the Citizenship Amendment Act, has a history of filing such petitions in various courts worldwide, including Europe and the US.

In 2011, OHCHR filed an application to be made amicus curiae (friend of the court/neutral adviser) in the European Court of Human Rights in Hirsi Jamma vs Italy, involving deportation of African nationals.

In 2015, OHCHR filed a plea against Spain on two illegal migrants. There are numerous other intervention petitions the UNHRC special rapporteurs too have made, officials told ET.

In the 2011 case, OHCHR sought intervention as it had the mandate to protect and promote all human rights and to conduct necessary advocacy. It said human rights of migrants have a special place in that mandate, in view of the particular vulnerabilities that migrants endure.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled that Rome had violated human rights principles by spurning African migrants and asylumseekers on high seas after considering the plight of 24 people from Somalia and Eritrea, among more than 200 intercepted by Italian authorities in 2009 and forced to return to Libya, from where they began the journey.

The case involving Spain had to do with a national each of Mali and Ivory Coast, who were asked to return to Morocco on August 13, 2014, after they attempted to enter Spanish territory by climbing over the fence surrounding the North African Spanish enclave of Melilla.

The court considered that the applicants had placed themselves in an unlawful situation when they deliberately attempted to enter Spain.

OHCHR was created by a UN General Assembly resolution in 1994. In Tuesdays case in the SC, high commissioner for refugees Michelle Bachelet Jeria invoked her mandate to inter alia protect and promote all human rights and to conduct necessary advocacy in that regard, established pursuant to the United Nations General Assembly resolution 48/141.

Reacting to the plea, the Ministry of External Affairs said the Citizenship Amendment Act is an internal matter of India and concerns the sovereign right of the Indian Parliament to make laws... No foreign party has any locus standi on issues pertaining to Indias sovereignty.

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OHCHR has filed petitions to become amicus curiae in Europe and America too - Economic Times

Up to half of the worlds sandy beaches are at risk of disappearing by the end of this century if no action is taken to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Thats according to a new study, published in Nature Climate Change. Even assuming a better outcome for action on climate change, where global emissions peak around 2040, well over one-third 37% of the worlds beaches would be lost by 2100.

Researchers had previously analysed satellite images showing shoreline change from 1984 to 2016. They found that a quarter of sandy beaches worldwide had already eroded at a rate of more than 0.5 metres per year, shedding over 28,000 square kilometres of land to the sea.

The rate at which sea levels are rising is accelerating by about 0.1mm per year each year. But sea level rise wont be even across the globe. The term sea level can be misleading the sea surface is not flat. Much like the atmosphere, it has high and low pressure areas which create mounds and troughs. Some of these are created by major currents, so changes that will take place as the oceans warm will change the topography of the sea surface. Some areas will receive less than the predicted average sea level rise, but many will see more.

More than 60% of sandy beaches in Gambia and Guinea-Bissau may be lost to erosion by rising seas, while Australia is expected to lose nearly 12,000 km of sandy coastline. For small island states such as Kiribati, the Marshall Islands and Tuvalu, losing 300m of land as predicted for some would be catastrophic.

Sandy beaches occupy more than one-third of the global coastline and of all the different types of beaches, sandy beaches are the most heavily used by people. Many coastal areas have been built on, for industry, housing and tourist resorts.

These softer parts of the shoreline have always been at the mercy of ocean storms and the tides. But the predicted sea level rise on top of these daily inundations pushes the boundary between coast and sea inland, a process known as coastal retreat.

The build-up of people and concrete at the landward fringe of sandy beaches has created an abrupt barrier to coastal retreat, preventing beaches from moving inland as sea levels rise. Instead, sandy stretches of coastline are at risk of being eroded and washed away entirely.

Warming seas also promise more intense and frequent storms, which are capable of moving entire beaches overnight. Porthleven Beach in Cornwall, United Kingdom lost all of its sand during a storm in January 2015, to be returned by the tide a few days later.

Soft sandy beaches are continuously moved by waves and currents depleting them in certain areas and depositing them in others. This transport of sand is normal, but the combined force of higher sea levels and stronger storms could spell extinction for many beaches.

All of this is very worrying for the millions of people who call these regions home. The worlds sandy coastlines tend to be densely populated, and are becoming more so over time.

In other research, it was found that sea level rise by 0.8 m could erase 17,000 sq km of land and force up to 5.3 million people to migrate, with an associated cost of USD$ 300 - USD$ 1,000 billion globally. In Africa alone, up to 40,000 people per year could be forced to migrate due to land loss by coastal erosion if no adaptive measures are in place by 2100.

But it isnt just climate change. Humans are actively accelerating coastal erosion by removing sand from beaches in enormous quantities and at much faster rates than it can be naturally renewed. Gravel and sand is extracted from rivers and on beaches for use in construction and at a faster rate than fossil fuel extraction in some areas.

Coastal ecosystems that bind and trap sediment, like mangrove swamps, are also being destroyed. The world lost almost 10,000 sq km of these habitats between 1996 and 2016. Meanwhile, sediment supply to the coast is also affected by building dams and irrigation systems upstream.

Sea level rise is inevitable, but how bad it will be is still not certain. Replenishing the most endangered beaches by pumping sand onto them a process called coastal nourishment could cost USD$65220 billion in total, but thats still less than one-fifth of the economic cost of taking no action at all on sea level rise. It could reduce land loss by up to 14%, lower the number of people that might be forced to migrate by up to 68% and shrink the cost of forced migration by up to 85% by 2100.

Even moderate emission mitigation policy, as the new study calls it, in which global emissions peak around 2040, could prevent 40% of the landward retreat of shorelines by 2100. On average, this would save more than 40m width of sandy beach around the world, from an average loss of around 250m.

Coastal nourishment can have its own ecological problems, so it would have to be done with careful attention to the local environment. But much of what needs to be done to save the worlds sandy beaches lies within our grasp already if we can just reduce the rate at which were consuming sand and burning fossil fuels. By doing that and expanding and protecting coastal habitats the terrible predictions from this new research might never come to pass.

Simon Boxall, Senior Lecturer in Ocean and Earth Science, University of Southampton. Abiy S Kebede, Lecturer in Flood and Coastal Engineering, Brunel University London.

This article first appeared on The Conversation.

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High alert: We may lose half the worlds sandy beaches to sea-level rise by 2100 - Scroll.in

Rear-Admiral Bob Auchterlonie and his career on the high seas will be honoured in the Comox Valley this Saturday.

The Cumberland native will be the latest person to receive a star on the Comox Valley Walk of Achievement. The Walk celebrates individuals from the area who have excelled in their chosen field. It is also to inspire young people and instil a sense of civic pride.

Once we get all the logistics done, we set up the day, says committee member Erik Eriksson. We do the ceremony and unveil the plaque on 5th Street.

The event is scheduled to start at 1 p.m. at the Sid Williams Theatre, before moving over to 5th Street for the unveiling.

Auchterlonies family has strong ties to the Comox Valley, and the family bakery was a fixture in Cumberland for decades. He attended Cumberland Elementary, Cumberland Junior and Georges P. Vanier Secondary. He later graduated from the Royal Military College of Canada in 1991 with a BA in economics. He also served as captain of the varsity hockey team.

Auchterlonie has had an esteemed career in the military, commanding ships and formations at every senior rank. He was commander of the HMCS Fredericton from 2007 to 2009, captain at CFB Esquimalt from 2012 to 2103, commodore of the Canadian Pacific Fleet from 2013 to 2015 and rear admiral of the Maritime Pacific Forces / Joint Task Force Pacific starting in 2018.

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He has also served four tours at the National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa. His educational background includes graduation from the Canadian Forces Command and Staff College and the Naval Command College at the U.S. Naval War College. He also earned a masters degree in defence studies at the Royal Military College of Canada, and is a graduate of the Senior Executives in the National and International Security program at Harvard. He is also a fellow of the U.S. GOFO Capstone and Pinnacle programs.

When he got appointed admiral and then when he became head of the Pacific fleet, it just rang huge bells for us, says Eriksson. We checked him and we found out his history and where hes from and what hes done, and it all came together and we figured this is totally the kind of person that should be honoured on the Walk of Achievement.

The Walk of Achievement started in 2006. Over the years, it has added a number of esteemed people from the Comox Valley community.

We got the support from all the municipalities, and its been going really well ever since, says Eriksson.

RELATED STORY: Local musicians inducted into Comox Valley Walk of Achievement

The list on honorees includes Red Robinson, Dr. Fred Leung, Stan Hagen, Jack Hodgins, Kim Cattrall, Iona Campagnolo, Stocky Edwards and Jock Finlayson. FMI: walkofachievement.com

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Rear admiral added to Comox Valley Walk of Achievement - vancouverislandfreedaily.com