Thousands of seafarers are left on board their vessels in foreign waters, unpaid, with scant supplies – and no way of getting home
When Vihaan* set off from his home in Tamil Nadu, south India, to work on a vessel crossing the Bay of Bengal into neighbouring Bangladesh, he told his family he would be gone a few months. After delivering his cargo of stone to Bangladesh’s Kutubdia Island, the marine engineer was due to head home in March 2024 to disembark at Thoothukudi port, India.
But that month, the rusting tug, the Navimar 3, which was being operated by Middle East Marine (MEM), was detained by the authorities in Bangladesh due to unpaid fees. For almost a year, Vihaan has become a virtual prisoner on board, he says, forced to work without pay to keep the vessel safe, amid strong currents where it is anchored off the island in the cyclone-prone bay. His passport and certification documents are being held by a local agent for the Dubai-based company. With no means of getting home, no visa to disembark and without supplies, he has to rely on food and water from charities and unions.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
02/26/2025 - 01:00
02/25/2025 - 21:06
Boat tour captures video of Northern right whale dolphins, Pacific white-sided dolphins and light grey baby calves
More than 2,000 dolphins gathered off the California coast to form a “superpod”, gliding and breaching the clear, aquamarine waters off Monterey Bay.
The superpod included Northern right whale dolphins and Pacific white-sided dolphins, as well as light grey baby calves. Evan Brodsky, a captain and videographer with the private boat tour company Monterey Bay Whale Watch, captured a video of the dolphins, and his company shared it on Facebook, calling the spectacle “mind-blowing”.
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02/25/2025 - 19:01
Volklec aims to start making batteries at part-government-funded site near Coventry before building its own factory
A startup has said it has learned from Britain’s faltering attempts to manufacture batteries for electric vehicles, as it signed a deal to license technology from an established Chinese firm.
Coventry-based Volklec plans to manufacture batteries for cars, boats, construction vehicles and aircraft using technology from China’s Far East Battery (FEB), a maker of batteries mainly for electric bikes.
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02/25/2025 - 17:57
Beaches in southern California littered with timber, twisted metals, charred silt and urban runoff from Palisades fire
Los Angeles county beaches are contending with the aftermath of recent wildfires and winter storms as debris from the Palisades fire and urban runoff are carried to the shoreline.
After last week’s major rainstorm, beaches in southern California have been littered with timber, twisted metals, construction materials and charred silt and sediment originating from the Palisades fire, which started on 7 January and killed at least 29 people.
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02/25/2025 - 10:00
An educator, archaeologist and scientist were among the thousands of government workers culled by Musk’s agency
The Trump administration has fired at least 20,000 government employees in its first month, as Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) dramatically overhauls work at federal agencies. Some economists have speculated that these terminations, which could affect nearly 300,000 workers, will be the biggest job cuts in US history.
Most of the workers cut were in probationary periods and lacked job protections that come with longer terms of employment. In social media spaces, especially the r/fednews subreddit, these workers described scenes of confusion and feelings of anger directed at Musk, an unelected billionaire dubbed a “special government employee” by the White House. Last week, unions for federal workers sued the Trump administration for unlawfully using probationary periods to cut staff.
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02/25/2025 - 10:00
Dry pattern seen among entire ‘lower basin’ of the Colorado River, including Arizona and desert cities such as Las Vegas
Dramatic rainstorms earlier this month brought more than 6in of rain to the California mountains – a full month’s worth of rain in little more than a day – but the deluge wasn’t enough to reverse a worsening drought trend that is set to intensify further in the coming weeks and months.
Along the iconic Pacific Coast highway in Malibu, where just weeks earlier flames leveled hundreds of oceanside homes, a Los Angeles firefighter was washed out to sea, and later rescued.
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02/25/2025 - 09:59
Union conference dominated by row over planned inheritance tax changes as farmers battle the bad weather and turbulent geopolitics
Farmers are warning of a “cashflow crisis” that has left many in the agricultural sector wondering how they will make it to the end of the year.
At the annual meeting of the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) of England and Wales, its president told members that “bad policy, geopolitics and unprecedented weather” had left some sectors of UK farming “in the worst cashflow crisis ever”.
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02/25/2025 - 09:40
Appeal from officials, including two senior figures from Trump’s first term, comes amid reports National Science Foundation’s budget will be slashed
Chuck Hagel, the former US defense secretary, and other former US national security officials, including two senior figures from Donald Trump’s first term, on Tuesday warned that China was outpacing the US in critical technology fields and urged Congress to increase funding for federal scientific research.
The appeal comes a week after the National Science Foundation (NSF), which funds science research, fired 170 people in response to Donald Trump’s order to reduce the federal workforce. An NSF spokesman declined comment on reports that hundreds more layoffs were possible and that the agency’s budget could be slashed by billions.
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02/25/2025 - 09:00
Climate Change Authority chair says his job is to provide ‘frank and fearless advice’ after he criticised opposition’s nuclear energy proposal
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The chair of the Climate Change Authority, Matt Kean, has hit back over an opposition suggestion that his criticism of its nuclear energy proposal could lead to him being sacked if the Coalition wins government.
Kean said the shadow climate change and energy minister, Ted O’Brien, should explain if a Peter Dutton-led government would seek retribution on the authority’s expert staff that prepared the nuclear report.
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02/25/2025 - 09:00
One expert says releasing a foreign strain into wild could increase risk of insecticide resistance
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A CSIRO-backed plan to release genetically modified mosquitoes in Queensland to combat dengue fever has sparked concern from scientists who suggest it could interfere with successful control programs and increase the risk of insecticide resistance.
Oxitec Australia, a collaboration between a British biotechnology firm and the CSIRO, has applied to sell a GM strain of Aedes aegypti mosquito, the main culprit for transmitting dengue and other viruses.
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