
A court in Southampton, England, has sentenced the captain of a British cargo vessel and its operator for their roles in a December 2021 Baltic Sea collision that resulted in the deaths of two Danish seamen.
The crash occurred when the Scot Carrier, managed by Intrada Ships Management Ltd, collided with the Karin Høj, a Danish-registered barge, causing it to capsize. Investigators later determined that serious failures in watch-keeping and safety protocols contributed to the accident.
Sam Farrow, the 33-year-old master of the Scot Carrier, was sentenced on 14 Feb to eight months in prison, suspended for 12 months, for failing to prevent the collision, despite being aware that his second officer was unfit for duty. He was also ordered to pay £25,000 (€30,000) in legal costs.
Meanwhile, Intrada Ships Management Ltd was fined £180,000 and ordered to pay £500,000 in legal costs for failing to enforce safety measures that could have prevented the accident.
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In 2022, a Danish court sentenced Mark Wilkinson, the second officer, to 18 months in prison after admitting to gross negligence and intoxication while on duty. Additionally, he received a 12-year ban from entering Denmark and had his maritime license revoked for operations in Danish waters.
The Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania completed a switch from Russia’s electricity grid to the EU’s system on Sunday, severing Soviet-era ties amid heightened security after the suspected sabotage of several subsea cables and pipelines.
Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, hailed the move, years in the planning, as marking a new era of freedom for the region, in a speech at a ceremony in Vilnius alongside the leaders of the three countries and the Polish president.
Debated for many years, the complex switch away from the grid of their former Soviet imperial overlord gained momentum following Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
It is designed to integrate the three Baltic states more closely with the EU and to boost the region’s energy security.
Source: Reuters
Shipping firms may need to pay a fee to use the Baltic Sea, one of the world’s busiest shipping routes, in order to cover the high costs of protecting undersea cables, Estonia’s defence minister said on Wednesday following a spate of breaches.
Nato said last week it would deploy frigates, patrol aircraft and drones in the Baltic Sea after a series of incidents in which ships have damaged power and communications cables with their anchors in acts of suspected sabotage.
In addition to the patrols, Hanno Pevkur, the defence minister, said countries are weighing other measures to protect cables, including installing sensors to detect anchors dragged across the sea floor or constructing casings or walls around the cables.
But this will come at a cost, and, whether countries or cable operators end up paying for it, consumers may be left ultimately footing the bill through higher taxes or utility costs. Another option, Mr Pevkur said, would be to levy a tax on vessels that sail through the Baltic Sea.
Source: Reuters
As is the case with most islands, there are two ways to get to and from Bornholm. The vast majority travel by sea: the ferry service transports some two million passengers annually, a service for which the current operator receives 4bn kroner (€540m) from the Danish state over the course of its 10-year contract. The locals complain a lot, but the operator turns a healthy profit.
Not so much luck on either count for DAT, the airline that offers the only other regularly scheduled way to get on or off the island. Its service, flying 200,000 passengers to and from Copenhagen each year, is neither subsidised nor profitable. Indeed, its current loss of 1.5m kroner per month had Jesper Rungholm, its managing director, earlier in the year publicly mulling whether to just stop serving the route from one day to the next, in breech of the airline’s contract with the local hospital to fly those patients who are too frail to take the ferry and the connecting coach service to Copenhagen for treatment.
Mr Rungholm immediately thought the better of doing so, telling the press the next day that his firm wasn’t the type to walk away from contracts. But his bellyaching served as a reminder that the route is not commercially viable, and that, unless someone in the government listens to his repeated requests to subsidise the route, his airline plans to stop serving Bornholm when the contact expires at the end of next November.
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Mr Rungholm immediately thought the better of doing so, telling the press the next day that his firm wasn’t the type to walk away from contracts. But his bellyaching served as a reminder that the route is not commercially viable, and that, unless someone in the government listens to his repeated requests to subsidise the route, his airline plans to stop serving Bornholm when the contact expires at the end of next November.
What Mr Rungholm would like the government to do is to declare the Bornholm-Copenhagen route a PSO (short for public-service obligation). To date, Copenhagen as been unwilling to do so, on the argument that it would break EU rules—and, anyway, it says, it already spends 25m kroner annually running Bornholm’s airport, despite it too losing money, and that this constitutes a form of subsidy, albeit indirect.
Other airlines, primarily SAS and Norwegian, do occasionally fly to Bornholm, but typically only during times when there are lots of passengers, which only makes it harder for DAT to turn a profit and riles Mr Rungholm further.
It starts by feeding them their own excrement

Most of the €5bn or so worth of warm-water prawns that make their way to European plates are imported from South-east Asia, to the detriment of the climate globally and the environment locally. That could change if the work being carried out by two Danish scientists on Bornholm shows they can be raised in tanks on land, close to the markets where they are consumed.
Per Meyer Jepsen and Simon David Herzog, both of Roskilde Universitet, have received €335,000 in funding from Brussels and Copenhagen, to work with partners on Bornholm to determine whether an approach known as biofloc makes it possible to raise them in land-based, closed-loop systems.
In short, applying biofloc to raise prawns entails using bacteria to convert their excrement back into food. This not only reduces feed costs, but it cuts discharge waste almost entirely, nearly eliminating one of the biggest environmental impacts prawn-farming has.
“Our goal is to test different ways of using biofloc technology for warm-water prawn production,” says Mr Jepsen. “With fish stocks dwindling, we must find alternatives that don’t further deplete marine ecosystems.”
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Nexø Vodbinderi, a Bornholm firm that has transitioned from net-making to aquaculture, is taking part in the project. Klaus Hjort Hansen, the manager of the firm, reckons it could result in locally-branded products for export. “We want to develop better, more sustainable ways to produce food. If we can do it here, we can create jobs and help sustain the local community.”
For Messrs Jepsen and Herzog, the project will only be a complete success if it yields a product Bornholm wants to claim as its own.
“From the start, it was crucial to anchor this project locally,” says Mr Jepsen. “We want these shrimp to be associated with the island’s reputation for quality. That’s why we’ll be working with a chef to evaluate the taste.”
The project is still in its early stages, but it aims to scale up to full commercial production at Nexø Vodbinderi. Mr Jepsen sees no reason why it can’t inspire similar ventures elsewhere.
If the project is successful in combining local expertise with cutting-edge techniques, it would set a precedent for sustainable seafood production, in the process turning the scientists behind it into prawn stars.
Snappy stand-first that won’t make the reader any the wiser about what the article is about. But will make them laugh

Shore-side power has become a major focus of the cruise industry’s efforts in recent years to reduce its environmental impact. It should come as no surprise, then, that Ports of Stockholm, the port authority overseeing the Swedish capital’s three main ports, made a big deal out it when it inaugurated the country’s on-shore power supply (or OPS) facility for international cruise ships on 17 September, making Stockholm the first port in Sweden—and one of just a handful in Europe—to allow cruise ships to power down their engines while in port.
Unlike a lot of other environmental initiatives, the benefits of on-shore power are immediately visible. For ships, being able to plug in, rather than run their engines, means no exhaust belching out of their smokestacks while in port.
This is because, in addition to propulsion, the diesel-electric engines that power most modern cruise ships also generate electricity. Often, more than half of an engine’s output is used for things like charging phones and keeping the lights on. Those are things that cannot be shut off entirely when the ships are in port.
Being able to plug in, more or less the way you would plug in an electric car, means less air pollution in the immediate vicinity of the ship, just as it also cuts out the noise the running engines generate. In places where the power is generated using renewable energy—such as Sweden’s hydroelectric or wind power—switching to on-shore electricity from on-board bunker brings down carbon pollution.
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For now, about half of the cruise ships that land at one of Port of Stockholms’ ports can connect to electricity. This is more than double the amount that could a few years ago. By 2028, three quarters of the world’s cruise ships are expected to be able to plug in, according to CLIA, an industry group.
For cruise operators, there is an incentive in being a first mover, if it makes it possible to attract those who are turned off by the industry’s tarnished image. The promise of financial gain will undoubtedly speed the process along, but ports themselves can also play a role, either by directly mandating that ships be able plug in or by holding carrots.
Ports of Stockholm, for example, already offers discounts on port fees for ships that exceed emissions standards for carbon dioxide and soot. These could be extended to include on-shore power.
Paying ships to run cleaner makes more than just environmental logic, according to Jens Holm, the chair of the Ports of Stockholm board. It and three other Baltic Sea ports, Copenhagen/Malmö, Aarhus and Helsinki, all received funding from the EU to install OPS—amounting to 20% of the total €76mn the four port authorities will spend to do so—and he reckons this can help the Baltic Sea region market itself as a green cruise destination.
Mixing water and electricity may, in this case at least, not be such a bad idea after all.
Russia, the world’s leading wheat exporter, is expanding its Baltic Sea ports as it aims to boost agricultural exports by 50% by 2030 while reducing dependence on traditional Black Sea routes, officials and executives said, Reuters, a news outlet, reports.
Baltic Sea ports loaded 1.5 million tons of grain last season, a three-fold increase from the previous season but still just 2.4% of overall Russian exports, according to Reuters calculations based on publicly available data.
“Logistically, the Baltic has many advantages for grains exports,” said Darya Snitko, vice president for Gazprombank, one of Russia’s largest banks and one of the biggest lenders to farmers.
She said the ability of Baltic terminals to handle bigger ships should help reduce overall costs.
Source: Reuters
Finland and Estonia on Friday have agreed to increase the security of their subsea infrastructure, which includes power and telecommunications cables as well as the Balticconnector gas pipeline that was damaged a year ago.
The agreement, announced in Helsinki on Friday, will see the two countries join forces to on things like technical surveillance, patrolling and repair capacities of subsea infrastructure in the Baltic.
It comes amid what Tallin and Helsinki say has been an increased number of threats against subsea infrastructure, and as countries around the Baltic rim are looking to expand all manner of subsea connections.
Finnish police continue to investigate cause of the Balticconnector damage, while Estonian police are looking into damage to subsea telecommunications links that occurred around the same time. Police in both countries have yet to provide their conclusions.
Local lawmakers on Bornholm have voted down a motion to begin the process of identifying potential sites for an industry estate that could serve as a crucible for energy start-ups once a planned converter station for off-shore wind farms comes on-line.
Tendering for the converter station on the southern coast and two wind farms capable of powering 4.5 million homes has begun. Collectively known as Energy Island Bornholm, it is due to begin producing power in 2030, and that, according to a majority of the environment, nature and planning committee, is too far off—and the outcome of the project still far too uncertain—to being looking for places to place an estate.
Helle Munk Ravnborg, the committee chair, told TV2/Bornholm, a local broadcaster, that identifying sites for potential development while the future of Energy Island Bornholm was unclear, and before the full council has decided to build an industry estate, would be an unnecessary worry for property owners in or near areas selected as suitable sites.
The council’s finance and climate committee is due to consider the same question when it meets on Wednesday. If it is approved, the proposal will come before the full council.

Pity the poor Estonian taxpayer. To the east, Moscow, and the spectre of invasion, looms. To the west, it is Brussels, and the threat of reprisals, should the country’s budget deficit again this year exceed 3%, the maximum amount allowed under EU rules. So, when Tallinn needed to find a way to come up with the €1.6 billion Estonia’s defence forces say they need here and now for their plan to stop any Russian invasion in its tracks, there was but one option: the double whammy of higher taxes and reduced levels of public services.
The crux of the government’s plan, announced last week, calls for VAT to be increased by two percentage points starting in July, bringing the standard rate to 22%. On top of that, starting in 2026, two percentage points will be added to personal and corporate taxes, likewise bringing the standard rates to 22% for both, while at the same time dropping the lowest corporate tax bracket, which allowed some companies to pay 14%.
Getting the budget back under the EU’s limit spells a return to form for Estonia. It has had a reputation for financial discipline since joining the bloc, but Russia’s unprovoked war on Ukraine in 2022 has been putting more money into its defence, while a recession had sapped the growth that could otherwise have paid for it.
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There is good news. The economy appears to be coming out of its doldrums, and these taxes, according to the prime minister, Kristen Michal (pictured above, in plaid sport coat), are the last his government will introduce in this term, which is set to end in 2027. After that, the plan is that they will go away.
He admits that the new taxes will chafe (indeed, some businesses fret they may buckle under because of them) but, on balance, knowing what the tax regime the next two years will be is preferable the uncertainty created by what he labelled as a “festival” of proposals in recent months.
“Predictability,” he says, “breeds certainty, and certainty breeds growth.”
One thing that is not certain is whether the tax will actually go away after 2027, according to multiple members of the cabinet. The military’s plan, for example, requires another €4bn that has not been allocated, and then there are domestic considerations, such as healthcare, which in 2028 alone will need €200m more than it is getting today.
“I can confirm that it will not be possible to abolish today’s taxes,” Lauri Läänemets, the interior minister, says.
Between Russia’s rock and Brussels’ hard place, there is still plenty of room for politics. All the more reason to pity the Estonian taxpayer.