Cargo Ship

SOUNDING like it was lifted from a Rudyard Kipling novel, "expedition artist" may be one of the world's most intriguing job titles. And Tujunga painter Danielle Eubank will be doing just that aboard the Phoenicia, documenting Philip Beale's attempt to circumnavigate Africa in a replica of a 600 B.C. Phoenician cargo ship. "I try to document everything as we go along, but I don't know ahead of time everything I'm going to paint. I might have some portraits, pictures of the boat, pictures of water.

A federal appeals court ruled in favor of environmentalists seeking protection for the endangered North Atlantic right whale, giving activists a victory in a fight to prevent whale-ship collisions. The decision, from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, overturns a lower court decision that declined to order the Coast Guard to review the ways that cargo-ship traffic might endanger the whales. Environmentalists want ships to slow down where whales congregate or go around them.

The military said Tamil Tiger rebels sank a navy cargo ship in the eastern port town of Trincomalee. Rebels attacked the 213-foot vessel with an underwater explosive device, said navy spokesman Cmdr. D.K.P. Dassanayake. He said the cargo ship was empty. The attack took place hours before voters were to cast ballots in a provincial election. The military has accused rebels of trying to disrupt the polls.

A U.S.-flagged cargo ship contracted by the Pentagon to ferry military equipment fired on a motorboat while preparing to enter the Suez Canal on Monday night, U.S. Navy officials said. Egyptian officials said one Egyptian man was killed and two wounded in the incident. According to a statement issued by the commander of the Navy's 5th Fleet, the cargo ship used its radio and other measures to warn several small boats that had approached to turn away.

Eighteen Ukrainian sailors were trapped in their capsized tugboat after it collided with a cargo ship in Hong Kong waters, a marine official said. Hong Kong Marine Department Director Roger Tupper said the sailors could be alive if they had found an air pocket. But he said divers knocked on the boat and did not hear the sailors signal back. Divers were hindered by strong currents and poor visibility, the Hong Kong government said in a statement.

Coast guard boats and helicopters searched for 14 sailors feared dead in chilly waters off South Korea after their cargo ship was thought to have sunk in high seas. The ship, carrying 2,000 tons of nitric acid, disappeared after it sent out a distress signal off Yeosu, 280 miles south of Seoul. One sailor was rescued but the remaining 14 crew members had yet to be located. Coast guard officials said the nitric acid was not expected to cause environmental damage because it easily dilutes.

The pilot of the cargo ship that sideswiped the Bay Bridge last month and spilled 58,000 gallons of fuel oil has given up his operating license, U.S. Coast Guard officials said Friday. Capt. John J. Cota turned over his license in an administrative procedure. The veteran pilot is preparing to fight charges by shipping regulators that he is incompetent to safely pilot vessels in the bay. The U.S.

Lofty rhetoric, followed by explosions that blew off parts of a hillside, marked the beginning of a multibillion-dollar expansion of the Panama Canal on Monday. The $5.25-billion expansion will accommodate a new class of huge ships capable of carrying more than twice the number of containers as the vessels that currently transit the waterway. Completion is set for 2014 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the inauguration of the original canal.

Pirates fired a grenade launcher and machine guns at a cargo ship in the Indian Ocean far off the coast of Somalia, a Malaysian-based maritime watchdog group said. The Qatar-flagged ship, the Ibn Younus, managed to escape Monday's attack after an hourlong chase as it headed from Durban in South Africa to Jebel Ali in Dubai, said Noel Choong, head of the International Maritime Bureau's Piracy Reporting Center in Kuala Lumpur.

Ocean-going vessels produce greater quantities of sulfur oxide air pollutants than all the world's cars, trucks and buses combined, according to a study released Thursday. The report by the International Council on Clean Transportation calls for international regulators to move aggressively to curb emissions from "bunker fuel" used by freight vessels that contains an average 27,000 parts per million of sulfur. U.S.