Free Republic

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Eight Turkish seamen who have spent nearly four months marooned aboard a docked freighter in Philadelphia because of their employer's legal entanglements didn't let the hours of tedium go to waste. With help from a seamen's welfare group, they studied English, learned to dance the salsa and even sampled some American treats like Philadelphia cheese steaks and doughnuts. But soon, a federal judge could decide to let the 499-foot Ahmet Bey's eight-member skeleton crew go home. On Tuesday, ship owner Karahasan Shipping Co. and its creditor HSH Nordbank of Hamburg, Germany, went to federal court over banker...

<p>LONDON, Sept. 23 (UPI) -- A Rand Corp. study released Tuesday in London warns terrorists might use container ships in terror attacks meant to cause massive casualties.</p> <p>World Tribune.com says the report warns cargo ships or shipping containers could be used to deliver weapons of mass destruction for terror groups such as al-Qaida.</p>

Terrorism experts fear that the world's oil tankers, sea lanes and major ports are dangerously vulnerable to 9/11-scale attacks that would cripple world trade. They cite an alarming combination of factors, including terrorist-connected Southeast Asian rebels involved in piracy, the difficulty of tracking suspect vessels in the murky world of commercial shipping, and an Al Qaeda fleet that could be as large as 300 vessels. Plots that have already been carried out include the October 2000 attack on the U.S. destroyer Cole in the port of Aden in Yemen, which killed 17 sailors, and the attack last October on the...

LONDON (Reuters) - The wreck of jinxed car carrier the Tricolor, which has already been hit by two ships since it sank in the English Channel in December, has done it again -- this time colliding with a salvage tug. Dutch-based Smit Salvage, contracted to remove oil from the partially submerged ship, said on Friday one of its tugs hit the partially submerged wreck and cracked the Tricolor's hull in bad weather on Wednesday. "Due to the high swell she was picked up by a wave and hit the wreck in a very unfortunate place -- directly on a tank...

Vice minister of foreign affairs Wang Yi summoned Japanese ambassador to China, Koreshige Anami, and made a "formal representation" over Japan's reported leasing of three disputed isles in the East China Sea, state press said early Sunday. Xinhua news agency said Wang Saturday noted that the Diaoyu Islands -- also known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China -- and adjacent islets had been a part of China since ancient times. "Any unilateral action on the islands by the Japanese side is illegal and invalid, which China will not accept," Wang said. "The Chinese government and people have the...

<p>PANAMA CITY — A country known for its hats, bananas and dictators has become a battleground for Taiwan and China, wealthy adversaries aggressively bidding for friends and influence a hemisphere away.</p> <p>Panama is one of the few countries that has diplomatic relations with Taiwan. But the presence of the Panama Canal gives China too big a stake to walk away in protest.</p>

BRUSSELS (Reuters)- The supertanker damaged by an explosion off the coast of Yemen was handed back to its owner CMB, despite a call by Yemeni government to pay millions of dollars for environmental damages, CMB said. Belgian shipping group CMB , which owns the French-flagged Limburg supertanker through its French Euronav unit, refused to pay Yemen $18.5 million in damages caused by oil that spilled out of the tanker's punctured hull in exchange for the release of its vessel. "It has been solved via a donation to the Yemeni population," Peter Raes, a CMB managing director, told Reuters, adding that...