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The U.S. Navy announced Wednesday morning that it has named one of its new ships after Marine Sgt. Rafael Peralta, a San Diego native who died a hero in Iraq in 2004. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus announced the move, saying a new guided-missile destroyer will be named the USS Rafael Peralta. A Pentagon statement said Mabus named that ship and two other new destroyers after Navy and Marine Corps heroes whose actions occurred during different conflicts but "were united in their uncommon valor." Peralta was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross after using his body to shield fellow Marines from an...

Three giant cargo ships are being tracked by US and British intelligence on suspicion that they might be carrying Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Each with a deadweight of 35,000 to 40,000 tonnes, the ships have been sailing around the world's oceans for the past three months while maintaining radio silence in clear violation of international maritime law, say authoritative shipping industry sources. The vessels left port in late November, just a few days after UN weapons inspectors led by Hans Blix began their search for the alleged Iraqi arsenal on their return to the country. Uncovering such a deadly...

When Project Utopia was unveiled by Yacht Island Design and naval architects BMT Nigel Gee, there was a certain healthy scepticism about the floating 11-storey lair. But gadget site Firebox is now offering it for sale as a Christmas gift. Price is 'on application' but the company says you should expect to pay several hundred million 'minimum'. The site also offers other surreal and very expensive gifts, such as a flying Back To The Future DeLorean car (yours for £70,000) - an idea familiar from ultra-luxury American catalogues such as Neiman Marcus, which in the past has offered gifts like...

(CNN) -- Iran plans to send ships near the Atlantic coast of the United States, state-run Islamic Republic News Agency reported Tuesday, quoting a commander. "The Navy of the Iranian Army will have a powerful presence near the United States borders," read the headline of the story, in Farsi. "Commander of the Navy of the Army of the Islamic Republic of Iran broke the news about the plans for the presence of this force in the Atlantic Ocean and said that the same way that the world arrogant power is present near our marine borders, we, with the help of...

Ships don't come with much more historical ballast than the MV Liemba. The steamer still shudders and belches its way across Lake Tanganyika every Wednesday and Friday, a century after it was built as a warship in Germany. In its time it's been a pawn in the colonial scramble for Africa. It's been scuttled and then raised again from the deep. It may have been the model for the warship sunk by The African Queen, a steam-powered launch in the film of the same name, starring Katharine Hepburn as a prim spinster and Humphrey Bogart as the rough captain. And...

Loose Lips Sink Ships

The ghost ships of Mothball Fleet: Incredible pictures of abandoned Navy war ships taken by crew of illegal squatters They are the Navy ships that heroically fought in World War Two, now slowly rotting in a San Francisco bay. And as they are being towed, one by one, for scrapping, in just a few years they will all be gone. A group of illegal squatters gained unprecedented access to the vessels by rowing at night for two years past security and climbing onto the ships, sleeping secretly on board for days at a time. And as these stunning images show,...

Osama bin Laden's personal files revealed a brazen idea to hijack oil tankers and blow them up at sea last summer, creating explosions he hoped would rattle the world's economy and send oil prices skyrocketing, the U.S. said Friday. The newly disclosed plot showed that while bin Laden was always scheming for the next big strike that would kill thousands of Americans, he also believed a relatively simpler attack on the oil industry could create a worldwide panic that would hurt Westerners every time they gassed up their cars. U.S. officials said the tanker idea, included in documents found in...

Other Groups, with Al Qaeda, Said to Threaten U.S. Last Updated: May 20, 2002 10:46 AM ET By Niala Boodhoo WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Islamic groups like Hizbollah and Egypt's Islamic Jihad could be planning to attack the United States and may be more able to do so than the al Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden, the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman said on Monday. "Our enemy is not al Qaeda alone," Sen. Bob Graham said on NBC's "Today" show, referring to the movement believed behind the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States that killed more than 3,000 people....

SAN FRANCISCO -- A federal appeals court rejected a shipping industry challenge Monday to California's offshore air pollution rules requiring vessels to use low-sulfur fuel within 24 miles of the coast, standards that the court said would save about 3,500 lives over six years while modestly increasing shipping costs. The ruling by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco is a milestone in California's efforts to curb a significant source of hazardous emissions. Low-grade bunker fuel from ships has a sulfur content more than 1,600 times as high as diesel fuel for trucks and exposes 80 percent...

NAIROBI, Kenya – Pirates in Somalia said Wednesday they are ferrying ammunition and men to the 30 hijacked vessels still under their control, and they threatened to kill more captives following the violent end to a hostage standoff that left four Americans dead. The U.S. military said that 15 pirates detained after the Americans were slain Tuesday could face trial in the United States.

After over a century of squabbling, the U.S. Army, under pressure from the Department of Defense, is surrendering the last of its fleet to the U.S. Navy. The army still has 119 ships, manned by 2,300 soldiers and civilians. While six of them are large amphibious landing ships, most are tugboats and barges for work in or near ports. The army isn't new to owning its own transports. Back during World War II, the U.S. Army actually had a larger fleet (but only 1,225 seagoing ships), than the U.S. Navy, but one that was almost entirely support vessels. The navy...

HELSINKI, Oct. 29 (Xinhua) -- The world's largest cruise ship "Allure of the Seas," built in Finnish Turku Shipyard, left Turku on Friday and proceeded directly to Florida Fort Lauderdale of the United States. The construction of cruise ship "Allure of the Seas" was completed and handed over to Royal Caribbean International on Oct. 28. The cruise ship will be serving its first cruise trip in December 2010. The "Allure of the Seas" is an architectural fantasy on the sea. It is 361-meters long, 66-meters wide, 72-meters high above the water, and its gross tonnage is up to 225,000 tons....

French Fos-Lavera strike blocks 61 ships2 hours 34 mins ago A three-week old strike at the French oil hub of Fos-Lavera to protest pension reform and working conditions is blocking 61 ships from unloading cargo, the port authority said on Sunday. The strikers want job guarantees as part of a port reform and are also protesting against President Nicolas Sarkozy's pension reforms that raise the retirement age to 62 from 60, which has already sparked several waves of nationwide protests. The strikes at Fos-Lavera, France's largest oil port, has helped squeeze the nation's fuel supply, creating fears it could run...

NOTE The following text is a quote: Alert Officer Identifies Wanted Man Workforce Stories When a Behavior Detection Officer (BDO) at Ohio’s Toledo Express Airport was approached by an individual in the public area of the airport, the Officer became suspicious of the individual’s actions and noticed injuries to the man’s hands. The BDO also recognized that the individual matched the description provided by the U.S. Coast Guard of a foreign national who jumped ship in the Port of Toledo. Based on the description, TSA contacted the Lucas County Sheriff, Toledo Port Authority Police, Coast Guard, Federal Bureau of Investigation...

L.A. Ports Already Forecast An Awesome Christmas Season Vincent Fernando, CFA Aug. 9, 2010, 6:14 AM Los Angeles port volumes continue to rebound, and the ports themselves believe that this could signal a strong holiday season in the U.S. this year, or at least stronger one than last year's: Hellenic Shipping News: “I think we’re seeing the imported goods and the containers like what you see here obviously filled with holiday items and we’re seeing those in larger numbers,” said Richard Steinke, the executive director of the Port of Long Beach, which sits on a complex alongside the Port of...

SNIPPET: "Iranian parliament member Mahmoud Ahmadi Bigesh said Wednesday that Egypt has promised to issue entry permits for him and three of his fellow parliament members, who want to enter the Gaza Strip via the Rafah crossing."

For The Record - The IPT Blog "Arab Journalists Come Out in Support of Israeli Flotilla Actions" by IPT News • Jun 29, 2010 at 6:01 pm SNIPPET: "Journalists in the Arab world have come out in support of Israel in the aftermath of last month's flotilla incident, which left 9 dead after Hamas-tied "humanitarian activists" attacked Israeli commandos with clubs, knives, and other weapons. The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) released excerpts from an interview with Magdi Khalil, an Egyptian-American writer, aired on June 15 on Al-Jazeera TV. Khalil explains: "The Turkish ship, however, was organized by a...

OAKLAND, Calif. – Hundreds of protesters condemning Israel's recent raid on an international flotilla bound for Gaza are picketing at the Port of Oakland, where an Israeli ship is due to arrive. The demonstrators gathered Sunday to prevent the incoming ship from being unloaded. The dock's day shift of longshoremen agreed to not cross the picket line. Meanwhile Sunday, Israel said it will immediately allow all goods into Gaza except weapons and items deemed to have a military use under its decision to ease its three-year-old blockade of the Palestinian territory. Israeli officials had decided last week to ease the...

SNIPPET: "Majlis National Security Committee chairman Alaeddin Boroujerdi said that the head of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Egyptian parliament, Muhammad Al-Fiqi, has authorized the members of the Iranian flotilla, which is to arrive via the Suez Canal, to enter Gaza through the Rafah border crossing. Boroujerdi clarified that this flotilla, which includes Majlis members, is distinct from the one being organized by the Iranian Red Crescent."

Knives, slingshots and night vision goggles indicate activists had less-than-peaceful goals. The array of equipment found on board the ships that made up the Gaza aid flotilla was as divergent as the flotilla’s stated aims. On the one hand there was medical equipment aimed to help ease the suffering of Gaza’s sick and handicapped, and on the other there were knives, slingshots and night vision goggles, which indicate hostile goals. Israeli military officials have said that the amount of goods found on the ships are a drop in the sea compared to the amount of goods that regularly pass into...

U.S. defense officials say a Navy vessel that is part of the new piracy task force intercepted and searched an Iranian-owned ship that officials feared was carrying arms to Hamas. It's unclear whether those suspicions were founded. Two defense officials say the Cypriot-flagged commercial vessel was tracked by a U.S. Navy ship in the Red Sea over the weekend. One official says it was boarded with the consent of the vessel's crew on Monday and Tuesday. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record. The search turned up ammunition that included artillery...

PROVINCETOWN - The wreck of the British warship that Paul Revere eluded at the start of his famous ride has resurfaced in Cape Cod’s shifting sands. About a dozen timbers from the HMS Somerset III were spotted on a Provincetown beach after erosion from recent storms.

Reporting from San Francisco - After years of legal wrangling, the federal government agreed Wednesday to remove a fleet of mothballed military ships that has dropped tons of heavy metal pollution into a waterway northeast of San Francisco. As part of a settlement with environmental groups, the U.S. Maritime Administration said it will remove 52 obsolete and decaying vessels -- nicknamed the Ghost Fleet -- from the estuary between the San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Five others have been removed since November. The agency plans to get rid of the 25 worst offenders in less than...

STOCKHOLM (AFP) – A dozen previously unknown shipwrecks, some of them believed to be up to 1,000 years old, were discovered in the Baltic Sea during a probe of the sea bed to prepare for the installation of a large gas pipeline, the Swedish National Heritage Board said Monday. "We have manage to identify 12 shipwrecks, and nine of them are considered to be fairly old," Peter Norman, a senior advisor with the heritage board, told AFP. "We think many of the ships are from the 17th and 18th centuries and we think some could even be from the Middle...

NUCLEAR weapons carried aboard Royal Navy warships are high on Al Qaeda’s hit list, it has emerged. Followers of Osama Bin Laden are being urged to track the Ark Royal, Illustrious and Invincible in what is being called the “battle of the masts”. A message from the Al Qaeda leadership says: “How many nuclear weapons might be on board and what would be the extent of the damage that could be caused if it was exposed to an attack?” The last time Al Qaeda launched a large-scale seaborne attack was in October 2000 when suicide bombers in a small vessel...

Thirty to 40 ships -- including several passenger ships -- were stuck Thursday in ice off the coast of Sweden, said a spokesman for the Maritime Search and Rescue Center in Gothenburg, Sweden. The area of the Baltic Sea worst hit by the ice were the waters bounded by mainland Sweden, the Stockholm archipelago and the Finnish island of Aland, said Tommy Gardebring, press officer with the Swedish Maritime Administration. Several passenger vessels from Viking Line were stuck, he said. One of them had been freed. "It has been a lot colder than normal in the southern parts of the...

Following The Bouncing Baltic Dry Index by: Hard Assets Investor February 16, 2010 Julian Murdoch Mid-February may seem like an odd time to look at 2009's shipping year in review. But as we enter earnings reporting season, now is actually the ideal time to revisit the things that were for shipping companies, as well as look ahead to what may come. And 2009 was a heck of a year. Just look at the Baltic Dry Index: As we've discussed previously, the Baltic Dry Index [BDI] gives an idea of the spot price for hiring a commodity-carrying ship at a given...

KABUL - Thousands of U.S., British and Afghan troops are poised to launch the biggest offensive of the war in Afghanistan in a test of the Obama administration's new counterinsurgency strategy. Military operations usually are intended to catch the enemy off guard, but for weeks U.S. and allied officials have been telling reporters about their forthcoming assault on Marjah, a Taliban-held town of 80,000 and drug-trafficking hub in southern poppy-growing Helmand province.

You could say that the three biggest challenges facing the U.S. Navy's shipbuilding program are money, money, and money. The service has a clear vision of how to construct a networked, flexible fleet suitable for use across the spectrum of conflict. But it only gets $13-14 billion per year to build the warships that will populate that fleet. That isn't much for a country that relies on its Navy every day to sustain nuclear deterrence, assure free transit of sea lanes, and carry the global war on terror to the enemy. However, with the government borrowing $4 billion per day...

Last week it was revealed that 54 oil tankers are anchored off the coast of Britain, refusing to unload their fuel until prices have risen. But that is not the only scandal in the shipping world. Today award-winning science writer Fred Pearce – environmental consultant to New Scientist and author of Confessions Of An Eco Sinner – reveals that the super-ships that keep the West in everything from Christmas gifts to computers pump out killer chemicals linked to thousands of deaths because of the filthy fuel they use. We've all noticed it. The filthy black smoke kicked out by funnels...

Check out this video of the "Oasis of the Seas" cruise ship. This is the biggest and most expensive cruise ship ever built and it recently sailed from Turku, Finland. It just arrived at the ship's home port in Fort Lauderdale, Florida three days ago on November 11 where it faces a challenge to fill its multitude of berths as we Americans are now struggling under Obama's recession and trying to keep our heads above water. Built at the cost of $1.5 billion, this 16-deck cruise vessel is nearly 40 percent larger than the industry's next-biggest ship and five...

SOMALI pirates fired in the air in jubilation after receiving a $1.8 million ransom in exchange for the release of a German-owned vessel and its 11-member crew. Somali sea gangs, operating in the strategic shipping lanes linking Asia and Europe, have made millions of dollars in ransom from hijacking vessels in the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden. "We have taken a $1.8 million ransom and released the German ship," pirate Ahmed said from a lair in the town of Eyl on the Somali coast. The 146-metre MV Victoria, an Antigua and Barbuda-flagged cargo vessel, was hijacked by eight pirates...

Note: The following text is a quote: 09 July 2009 EGYPT ARRESTS TERRORIST CELL OF 25 MEMBERS CAIRO, July 9 (Xinhua) The Egyptian authorities have arrested a terrorist cell of 25 members, 24 Egyptians and one Palestinian, for plotting to carry out terrorist attacks in Suez Canal, Egyptian Interior Ministry said in statement issued on Thursday. According to the statement, the members of the cell who believe in Jihad (Holy War) were located in Cairo, Alexandria and Daqahlia governorates and communicated through internet with other terrorist groups outside Egypt. The cell's members, mostly engineers, were developing high-tech and electronic devices...

(LEAD) Chinese ships shunning waters near Korea amid tensions SEOUL, May 29 (Yonhap) -- Chinese fishing vessels are leaving the Yellow Sea, where tensions between the two Koreas have escalated after Pyongyang's threats of military clash, a defense source here said Friday. "Chinese fishing ships operating near the Northern Limit Line (NLL) began withdrawing yesterday," the source said, adding the military authorities are trying to find out whether North Korea asked them to do so. More than 280 Chinese vessels were fishing near the NLL for crab earlier this week but the number has dropped to about 140, according to...

WASHINGTON, April 17, 2009 – A recent agreement among the Defense Department, the Navy and shipbuilders will enable more efficient construction of the next-generation destroyer at one shipyard instead of two, a senior Defense Department official announced here today. The “swap” agreement calls for three DDG-1000 destroyers to be built at the Bath Iron Works in Maine, John J. Young Jr., undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, told reporters at the Pentagon. Work on the DDG-1000 destroyers previously was to be split between General Dynamics’ Bath Works and Northrop Grumman’s Ingalls Shipyard in Mississippi, Young said. As part...

<p>MOMBASA, Kenya (AP) - Somali pirates vowed to hunt down American ships and kill their sailors and French forces detained 11 other brigands in a high-seas raid as tensions ratcheted up Wednesday off Africa's volatile eastern coast.</p> <p>Pirates fired grenades and automatic weapons at an American freighter loaded with food aid but the ship escaped and was heading to Kenya under U.S. Navy guard.</p>

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) - Crews have held pirates off with Molotov cocktails, crates of rubbish and oil drums. They've electrified handrails, sprayed attackers with high-pressure fire hoses and simply kicked the pirates' rickety ladders overboard. But owners of ships plying the pirate-infested waters off Somalia's coast have balked at having firearms onboard, despite an increasing number of attacks where bullets pierced hulls or rocket propelled grenades whooshed overhead. The reason is twofold: Owners fear pirates would be more likely to continue shooting once on board if they confronted weapons, and the company might be held liable for deaths or injuries...

The International Maritime Bureau says 260 crew on 14 hijacked ships are being held off the coast of Somalia, not including the U.S.-flagged ship seized Wednesday — the Maersk Alabama and its crew of 20 U.S. nationals.

WASHINGTON, March 11, 2009 – The incident in the South China Sea involving a U.S. ocean surveillance ship is serious enough to merit face-to-face discussions between U.S. and Chinese officials, Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell said today. The USNS Impeccable – an unarmed Military Sealift Command vessel -- was conducting operations in international waters 70 miles south of Hainan Island on March 8 when the ship was surrounded and harassed by five Chinese vessels. Morrell said the U.S. defense attaché in Beijing has been talking with China’s defense ministry about the incident. The Chinese defense attaché also is speaking...

It turns out the oldest seafaring ships ever found actually work An archaeologist who examined remnants of the oldest-known seafaring ships has now put ancient Egyptian technology to the test. She teamed up with a naval architect, modern shipwrights and an on-site Egyptian archaeologist to build a replica 3,800-year-old ship for a Red Sea trial run this past December. The voyage was meant to retrace an ancient voyage that the female pharaoh Hatsheput sponsored to a place which ancient Egyptians called God's land, or Punt. Ship planks and oar blades discovered in 2006 at the caves of Wadi Gawasis provided...

My surface ship buddy Tim passed on these photos of the second class of littoral combat ship (LCS 2), named Independence, and built by General Dynamics/Bath iron Works in their Mobile, Alabama shipyards. The other ships built thus far for the LCS program have been by Lockheed Martin and have had their fair share of problems, having had two of their follow-on LCS programs cancelled for cost overruns. Both GD and Lockheed Martin had contracts canceled for their 2nd hulls, due primarily to an inability to agree on a fixed price contract with the Navy (edited thanks to Ken Adams...

(IsraelNN.com) Qatar and Turkey have joined Libya in an intensified attempt to break Israel sovereignty over the Gaza Coast. The Israeli government blocked the Libyan ship from landing at Gaza this week but refused to comment on further actions. However, Palestinian Authority legislator Jamal al-Khodary said that the boat, reportedly loaded with 3,000 tons of food and medicine, will try again. "We are holding pressing contacts with Ahmed al-Tibi, an Arab member of the Israeli Knesset, the Libyan health minister Mohammed Rashed and the ship's crew who are determined to go to Gaza," he told the Chinese news agency Xinhua....

NATIONAL MILITARY ESTABLISHMENT OFFICE OF PUBLIC INFORMATION Washington 25, D. C. MEMORANDUM TO THE PRESS NO. M 26 - 49 IMMEDIATE RELEASE APRIL 27, 1949 RE 6700 Ext. 3201 The following report is a digest of preliminary studies made by the Air Material Command, Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio, on "Flying Saucers." PROJECT "SAUCER" On Tuesday, June 24, 1947, a Boise, Idaho businessman named Kenneth Arnold looked from his private plane and spotted a chain of nine saucer-like objects playing tag with the jagged peaks of Washington's Mt. Ranier at what he described as a "fantastic speed." Arnold's report set off...

BAHRAIN (July 15, 2008) — Coalition warships operating in the Gulf region have seized 23 tons of narcotics, which could have been used to fund the insurgency in Afghanistan. The British warships involved were frigates HMS Chatham and HMS Montrose, and the destroyer HMS Edinburgh. They were supported by the Royal Fleet Auxiliary helicopter support ship Argus and her embarked Sea King aircraft.Sailors and Royal Marines from the ships discovered hidden drugs in vessels along the so-called "Hash Highway," and often operated in the most unpleasant of conditions. The narcotics they seized included hashish, opiates, cocaine and amphetamines. "The scourge...

As President George W. Bush considers repealing a ban on drilling off most of the coast of the United States, a shortage of ships used for such drilling promises to impede any rapid turnaround in oil exploration. Slow growth in oil supplies, at a time of soaring demand, has been a major factor in the spike in oil and gasoline prices. In recent years, a global shortage of drill ships has created a critical bottleneck, frustrating energy company executives and constraining their ability to exploit known reserves or find new ones. As oil trades at more than $135 a barrel...

US researchers say they have developed an effective way to kill unwanted plants and animals that hitch a ride in the ballast waters of cargo vessels. Tests showed that a continuous microwave system was able to remove all marine life within the water tanks. The UN lists "invasive species" dispersed by ballast water discharges as one of the four main threats to the world's marine ecosystems. The findings will appear in the journal Environmental Science and Technology. Shipping moves more than 80% of the world's commodities and transfers up to five billion tonnes of ballast water internationally each year, data...

We’ve been hearing rumblings about the U.S. Navy’s triple-hulled ships, but here’s one that was launched last month, the U.S.S Independence. Built by General Dynamics, it’s called a “littoral combat ship” (LCS), and the trimaran can move huge weapons around faster than any ship in the Navy. Ironic that with all that high tech built in, the ship reminds us of the Merrimac ironclad from Civil War days. Littoral means close to shore, and that’s where these fleet-hulled babies will operate, tailor-made for launching helicopters and armored vehicles, sweeping mines and firing all manner of torpedoes, missiles and machine guns....

Titanic, left, and Olympic sat next to one another in a double gantry in the last photo of the two together, weeks before Olympic set sail Researchers have discovered that the builder of the Titanic struggled for years to obtain enough good rivets and riveters and ultimately settled on faulty materials that doomed the ship, which sank 96 years ago Tuesday. The builder’s own archives, two scientists say, harbor evidence of a deadly mix of low quality rivets and lofty ambition as the builder labored to construct the three biggest ships in the world at once — the Titanic...

WASHINGTON - The Environmental Protection Agency is announcing strong new pollution controls on the nation's locomotives, ships and passenger ferries. They will have to cut soot by 90 percent and smog-causing chemical releases by 80 percent over the next six to seven years through technology improvements in locomotive and ship diesel engines. Those engines often operate for decades. The pollution improvements would be required of new engines as well as old when they are overhauled. The Associated Press has learned that EPA will announce the new requirements Friday in Washington. These requirements would be in addition to regulations already in...