Porti & ambiente — le notizie raccolte

French-based engineering player Technip Energies has shed light on the revenue value for its scope of work on a second floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) facility on an LNG project in Mozambique, operated by Mozambique Rovuma Venture (MRV), an Eni-led joint venture (JV). Technip Energies, inpartnershipwith JGC and Samsung Heavy Industries, has been awarded an engineering, procurement, construction, installation, and commissioning (EPCIC) contract by Mozambique Rovuma Venture for theCoral Norte/North FLNGproject, which, together with previously announced contracts, represents over €1 billion of revenue for the company. Designed to produce approximately 3.6 million tons per annum (mtpa) of LNG, doubling theCoral LNGhub’s capacity to 7 mtpa, the FLNG project offshore Mozambique is being developed by Eni and its partners: CNPC, ENH, XRG, and KOGAS. Following thego-aheadfor Coral Norte, thefinal investment decision (FID)for the FLNG development was made in October 2025. The French player claims that this expansion positions Mozambique among Africa’s top three LNG producers, further strengthening the country’s role in the global energy market. Coral Norte is designed as an enhanced replica ofCoral Sul, the first development in Mozambique’s Area 4 offshore gas block, whichbecame operationalin 2022. The replication approach is perceived to leverage the projects’ common feed gas composition and deepwater location to enhance execution certainty and optimized performance, while drawing on engineering and integration lessons learned from the earlier development. This content is available after accepting the cookies. Exclusive interview with Eni: Gas and LNG at crux of multiple FIDs as ‘game-changing phase’ edges closer By standardizing the project delivery model, Technip Energies and its partners are expected to provide a de-risked path to scale and greater predictability at every stage. This award builds on thepreviously announced contractsand confirms the continued advancement of the company’s scope of work on the Coral Norte FLNG project. Arnaud Pieton, Chief Executive Officer of Technip Energies, commented:“The Coral Norte project reflects the confidence of Eni and its partners in our FLNG execution capabilities and in the performance in operations of the Coral South FLNG. By leveraging our ‘design one, build many’ approach, we are demonstrating how a standardized model can accelerate large-scale offshore project delivery. “This approach enables faster deployment of new LNG capacity, contributing to energy security and diversification. It also reinforces Mozambique’s growing role in the global LNG landscape.” This comes shortly after Technip Energiessecured full notice to proceed (FNTP)with an engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contract withCommonwealth LNG, representing more than €1 billion of revenue. Take the spotlight and anchor your brand in the heart of the offshore world! Join us for a bigger impact and amplify your presence at the core hub of the offshore energy community!

SubscribeApple Podcasts|Spotify|YouTube|RSS On Monday’sGood Morning Hospitality, A Skift Podcast,Brandreth Canaley,Michael Goldin, andJamie Lanebreak down what AI is actually doing to travel economics and operations right now. The conversation opens with a story that stops you in your tracks: one traveler usedClaudeto run 881,076 searches onEtihadAirways to find one flight. The infrastructure cost of that search exceeded the commission. From there, the team digs intoBrian Chesky‘s move to build an AI lab outside ofAirbnband what it signals about the platform’s AI strategy, before closing with a look at what real AI adoption looks like at scale throughEvolve‘s playbook of deflecting 60% of guest inquiries without human intervention. This episode is presented by⁠⁠Cloudbeds⁠⁠,Bilt⁠⁠, andStayFi. This transcript is generated by artificial intelligence. Good morning. Happy Monday. Best day of the week. We’re back in full strength. This is good. We’re getting in a little summer routine here. I know, before we all start traveling for summer. Brandy’s tied to her desk because it’s June, and she is sworn off travel in June. Yeah, I actually, because I, well, swore off travel in June, I had like a great south shore, like solo adventure day on Saturday, and ate like so much great seafood, got like a ride on my friend’s boat for a couple hours, and I did that all because I didn’t leave Boston. So. Vacation, so you did travel. I mean, I drew, I’m counting, that was like a little day trip. I drove like an hour. Okay. I slept in my own bed. It’s always nice. Yeah, I had a nice weekend with the kids. Went out to dinner on Friday. Actually, we had a baby shower. We had a nice dinner on Saturday night. So it was kids went to the grandparents. It was a good weekend. Vacation for you too. Yeah. Lovely. Well, my wife was out of town much of the weekend, so it was boys’ weekend. Let the chaos ensue, you know? So I survived. No broken bones, no nothing like that. So a good, not so relaxing, but a good weekend. Wife is back though for this week? Yeah, she was back at night. She was just gone all day. So day trips like Brandy was doing. But back and then she’ll be out of town again this weekend. But tomorrow, going to see Messi against Argentina. So not Argentina against Iceland. Amy is going to Iceland soon. So I invited him down, but he doesn’t like Albert. So yeah. Anyone starting to get World Cup fever? Okay, I had this, I want to be more excited about it. I don’t know. It’s just like not catching. I don’t know. And I’m in a city where it’s happening, maybe when it actually starts. But part of me, it feels like an old man attitude of like, I don’t want to go in all those crowds, go like down into like downtown Boston. But I think I need to find some cool locations that are doing stuff maybe out in my neighborhood and not in the central watch parties. Yeah. So this is a good tee up into the first article. But so I’m watching, trying to find tickets. I’m like, why am I like hitting these sites every day? So I vibe coded a scrapier to go and look at ticket prices for each match across Ticketmaster and StubHub. So Brandy, if you can throw that up. So this is how tickets are trending, and at least over the weekend, not trending down yet, but $228 for the cheapest match. Czech Republic for South Africa, Congo versus Uzbekistan. Still not cheap, but not crazy. Under $1,000 to get the whole family in the thing. But it is just an example of how easy it is now to spin up scrapers that can just run however many times you want across all the different ways you’d want to filter, analyze tickets. It’s pretty incredible how these things can work these days. They looked pretty flat. I didn’t see a whole lot of dynamic pricing in there, Jamie. No, this is, I’m hoping they just start collapsing. So for those listening, it is just a bunch of flat lines. Not the prettiest graph, not the most exciting graph, but hopefully we’ll see once you get closer to the game. 5:28 AI Travel Search Costs Well, before we get to our first story, the main tag of that, the first story is that someone ran a search on Etihad, and it came back with almost 900,000 searches. So we’ll get into how scraping is changing, how we all search and what the companies are doing to deal with that. But before we get into the first article, we want to shout out our sponsor, Cloudbeds. They unify your operation, distribution, guest experience and revenue marketing in one place, powered by Signals, Hospitality’s first foundation AI model. So whether you’re trying to drive more direct bookings, which we all are, I guess, depending on the episode that we’re talking about, cut training time or finally get your data working for you, Cloudbeds is built for what’s next. Learn more at cloudbeds.com/gmh, and you can find that link in the show notes. So with all these searches, not Jamie’s scraper for World Cup tickets, but for people who are doing really crazy travel searches, the cost of all of those is becoming part of the conversation. So who is paying for the power to look at? That’s one flight that he did almost 900,000 searches for, or not he, the agent did. So what is your take on how you see, the whole industry is grappling with not only just the change in behavior, but now there’s an infrastructure and cost component that is kind of taking people by surprise. So Michael, can you explain just like what this infrastructure looks like sort of behind the searches? Nope, I sure can’t. I do know that the more structured your data is, the easier it is to search and query. Now, because the training that AI has, it’s going over thousands, hundreds of thousands of searches, which is not how a human typically searches. We have our go-to places, and I think this is where it will evolve over time with AI. It’ll get to know us and know what we like and know what we book. But until then, it’s just absolutely buckshot. It is everywhere. Birdshot, not buckshot. There’s someone out there right now who’s listening to this, just like screaming in their car. Jason. Yeah, Jason. But the reality is like how these agreements get set up for, and these search companies or these OTAs that are then hitting the GDS to be able to serve all these airline rates, build out the connected trip. It’s sort of predicated in the prices underneath it are that someone’s going to search three, five, ten different combinations of trip length and location to get a sense of prices. And then they’re going to go about and book one of those. And that the underlying costs of three, five, ten different searches is reasonable for what the GDSs are going to charge and ultimately what the OTA is going to get in terms of the commission. But the article… 25 years of data. Yeah. It shows their conversion rates. They got top of funnel. They got all the way down. And just so we know, those costs are two to $10. So pretty manageable per ticket. Right. But then if someone has an agent doing those searches for you, that 10 searches… I think the article… And it does a good job of pulling out this LinkedIn post that is just throwing out like I’m someone going ridiculous of 800,000 searches, but I’m a typical agent, if you asked it to go and search these five different nations, these five different destinations, these different date combinations to help me find the right search. And we’re looking at hundreds of searches now, or maybe even thousands. And the economics of running an OTA and hitting the GDS to serve that up don’t work. And so the article goes into I think some ways they’re trying to combat it. The one is like catching all the information. Like if you search it, someone searches it once, they can sort of save it and serve it back and not have to hit the GDS to be able to pull that back. And the more people that are searching and the more sort of results that you can sort of have stare stored and serve back like they’re not getting charged for every single one of those. But that is infrastructure costs on their side. But and there might have to be some big changes on either the cost of what the GDS is charge or that and these sites are going to try to start blocking these scrapers that and that they’re just not going to allow on all this search traffic to come through their site. through their site. 10:37 Legacy Tech AI Clash Well right now this is a great example of the clash of like legacy infrastructure and technology that really hasn’t had to adapt in a very long time with a new product that is getting more sophisticated every day. And I think that, I mean, I certainly don’t think about it when I go to Google and I like look up flights. I’m not thinking about the technology and like the rate systems that airlines are using to load their rates on, right? Like I’m not at all thinking about that. But that technology from the article, it sounds like that hasn’t been updated or advanced in a very long time. So, they’re playing like a kind of a silly defense where they’re like, how do we like prevent this from happening instead of how do we like radically change our infrastructure, which is, I mean, I’m not saying that’s simple at all, but like, it’s like trying to, I don’t know, trying to fight this tsunami with like a small like sandcastle sandbucket trying to, you know what I mean? Like it’s just not going to happen. Yeah, doing that or building a fort around yourself is not going to work either. If you’re going to block all AI transactions, you’re going to lose. Saber and Amadeus have, Saber did some caching, Amadeus did some machine learning that filtered 175 million unproductive transactions a day. So absolutely massive volume. So we’re in this weird transition phase, where both AI, AI on both sides is going to get smarter. On Amadeus side, the machine learning looks to be really productive. We don’t know what that is in a percentage, but 175 million transactions blocked today is going to be impactful, whether it’s 1% or 80%. But AI is also going to know Brandy and Jamie and Michael better to where it doesn’t have to go look at Spirit flights or Frontier flights or anything besides Delta for flights for Michael or Jamie as well. So, you know, we’re just in this weird phase. And yes, you don’t want to be caught holding the bag, losing money on every transaction for the next, I don’t know, two years while this tech transition happens. But I don’t know if there’s not an easy fix, unless your tech team is really good and can spin up some some band-aids real fast. Well, and I think it’s interesting that the source of for this, or the start of this article is that that was a guy searching for one flight, right? And so you think about, I mean, now because you can just kind of like talk at any of these agents. And so you have people that are trying to search like, oh, I could go here or I could go here and I could go this day or I go this airline. Like, I can see the potential for just like an absolutely astronomical volume of search queries. And that’s just someone like, that could be like someone just like had a couple glasses of wine and is like, lalalalala. Like I’m just trying to like look at stuff with maybe no even intention to book. So yeah, it’s a it’s I don’t envy the role of like the CTOs and CIOs that are trying to figure out how to manage not only the new technology and how you adapt to it, but then there’s so much security stuff that goes around all of this. Like those two positions right now, stressful. Well, and Paul had a really good comment. Legacy versus Gentic infrastructure is going to be a really big story moving forward. Now, on one hand, and we’ve talked about this on the show before, legacy systems have all of the data to make the AI models better. But if they’re built on the infrastructure that’s 25 years old, and they’ve just got all this tech debt stacked up through years, they’re going to be looking at in the room talking about, do we just scrap this all and rebuild? Or is there another way around it? Jamie, what’s your take on Legacy versus Gentic? Yeah. It’s been at the forefront of us thinking about, we’re building this new dynamic pricing tool and how our old infrastructure was. And that’s, and AirDNA was started in 2014. It just couldn’t support what we wanted to do with a new Gentic tool. It was better to just scrap everything we had, start entirely from scratch, to support this new infrastructure and new product. So I think, and John’s comment is, I think, relevant. Like there are startups that seem to be building businesses on current token costs. The investors are not investing and keep losing billions. These startup models will collapse overnight. If you’re building this new tech on top of old infrastructure, I was just saying, the math doesn’t math. As the fun infographic on Skift. I think there’s ways to develop new infrastructure off of the old data. The old data sets and old data and models still have everything you need. You’re now building for a world where you’ve got to serve millions or billions of searches. It just takes evolving the infrastructure to be able to support it. All it’s trying to do, Jamie, is to make you happy. So it’s searching as many areas as it possibly can to make you happy. There’s a quote in the Skift article from Gurav Roy. It says, AI-driven interactions are often more contextual and commercially relevant than traditional search patterns. If you have your data clean, structured, AI-legible, it’s going to help you win, especially in the short and intermediate term, more times than not, as long as you’re answering the question and making AI let Jamie be happy. But also, there’s the downstream applications of this volume of things that are built off of search volume. Like, what are all these pricing tools now that you search as an indicator, where if you’ve got all these searches that are now not actually an indication of booking, but are just an agentic tool and you’re adding a whole lot of noise to any signal Well, also, I feel like the whole kind of all of the internet analytics, especially like any marketing department uses, like I think all these KPIs are just going to get like blown up. We’re going to have to like scrap them and start again because… It’s going to be AI conversion rates, right? It’s like, who cares how many people are going to see your site? It’s going to be… Are you pleasing the robots? Well, I even noticed like my own personal behavior of… Instead of going to Google to ask something, I’m just talking with Claude. Like I barely… And I was like, wow, that’s just… It’s so interesting to see how your own personal behavior changes. But before we get into our next AI topic, it’s an AI heavy day today, folks. I want to shout out our sponsor, Bilt. They’re helping restaurants and hotel F&B teams better understand guests and create more personalize experiences that drive repeat visits. If you care about loyalty and guest experience, as you know, all of you do, it’s absolutely worth checking out. Head to joinbilt.com/gmh and you can find that link in the show notes. 18:43 Brian Chesky AI So this next topic, Brian Chesky building an AI lab, is we don’t really have a ton of information on this yet. So this is just like a call out, something to be paying attention to. But this is not happening in Airbnb. This seems to be a side project. And so it’s interesting that this is a side project and not within Airbnb. So do you guys have any initial thoughts on that? Yeah, I talked to a buddy of mine who’s a VC in San Francisco last week, and he’s like, it’s wild out here. It is the wild west. It’s an absolute gold rush. There’s so much money flowing around everywhere. That’s in my read, that’s what this is. I don’t, I wouldn’t anticipate it has a ton to do directly with Airbnb. I’m sure he’ll have ways to tie it back in. And he’s also publicly good friends with Sam Altman. So I’m sure Sam’s in his ear of like, oh, you should do something like this. Or I wish we had done X, Y and Z. Brian is a design forward guy. Nothing in AI right now is very design forward. So I would expect to see something blending those two. But I don’t know how much agents care about looks and design, but maybe they do. You know, he is always talking about, he wants to be for like the end consumer, the individual host, the person with their shared room. So maybe this will be for the user interface, give something back to the people, something to look at. Also, we were talking, he just needs something to spend his money on. It’s worth what, $10 billion now? Yeah. But it’s not going to be infrastructure because you need at least $10 billion to get an AI infrastructure project stood up. Yeah. He’s a guy with very strong opinions on how design should work, and how user interaction should work in this age of AI. He obviously has an outlook through Airbnb, of which to impact a single app and a single user flow. But if he has broader vision on how consumers, how companies should be leveraging AI in their tools, I think it’s bold and a big bet that he can create a lab that can sort of impact a much more broader ecosystem. So I do think he has a lot of power within Airbnb to show other companies the way through. And here’s how we did it. And how many companies out there, how many, just think of every single website that exists in the travel space now, like that is essentially copied Airbnb over the years in terms of their design, their UI. But maybe this is a way to go and try to monetize it a bit more. Yeah, so we’ll just keep a look out. I mean, we’re always seeing what interesting things he’s up to. And yeah, we’ll see. And also, if he wants to spend his money on something else, he can take me out for dinner. That’s totally fine. I’m open to it. Just hopefully he never listens to any of my brandy rants about this podcast over the last five years. And before we get to our third and final AI article of the day, I want to give a shout out to a new sponsor, StayFi. StayFi helps short-term rental operators build direct guest relationships through branded Wi-Fi portals, email marketing, and guest data. We actually were big users of StayFi at Romy, so I love Arthur and his team. They turn one-time bookers into repeat guests, so getting those elusive guests that come through with the masked emails, that’s key for growing your BookDirect data. Start growing your direct booking revenue today at stayfi.com/goodmorninghospitality, and you can also find that link in the show notes. 22:54 Evolve AI Deflection There was the big Skift Data and AI conference last week, lots of really fun nuggets that were coming out of that. One of them was the interview with Evolve, and the crazy stat coming out of that was that they have deflected 60 percent of guest inquiries with AI, and that’s a huge number, and we’re always talking about how effective are some of these agents at really solving the problems. But 60 percent is a pretty significant number, and being able to also focus that human interaction, that need for high-level judgment, that’s where they’re focusing their human attention. I think this is a really great example of how this can be successful. Yeah, I think they’ve taken it step-by-step and rolled out AI in listings, and guest communications, and pricing. They’ve run all the way up and down. What scares me a little bit is their business model in general was basically getting the guest to the property, and then local on-site team, or a maintenance person, a cleaning person has to go in and do the local stuff. They’re 20 steps ahead of anybody else in this space, but this is a fairly disruptible business model now, more than it was five years ago with the rise of AI. A lot of these things exist in point solution cases, but Evolve has done a good job of rolling those in already, and I’m sure their headcount or productivity has improved, one or the other, or both. I’m curious, I’d love to chat with some of them on what their plan is to keep competitors at bay, because I do anticipate they’ll start having more and more competition in this segment in particular. Well, yeah. Oh, sorry, go ahead, Jerry. I would say, you think about their business model, it’s like, it’s marketing, it’s communications, it’s revenue management. Like, all three of those things should be able, they leverage huge amounts of AI to automate aspects of it. And then it just becomes, for a host, do you want to hire Evolve to do all of it for you? Do you want to piecemeal it through the different point solutions out there? Do you want to have your PMS try to do it all for you? And each of those sort of charging for it. So, and it could just be that they capture the people that just want to all in one solution, just sign me up, do it for me, don’t and do a great job. And AI helps them do a significantly better job because the ability to automate it and do it cheaper. Or that their ability to charge as much for it just gets compressed because of all the other tools that can do it and just as well, but at a fraction of the cost of what Evolve charges. Well, and that part of I think we’re also in this era where everyone’s like, you can just vibe code your own, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it’s just like, I’m not on that train. Not everybody is as comfortable with all of this technology. I think that there’s going to be the need for the Evolves, or the people that are going to do all of these solutions for you. I do agree though, that cost is going to be like, the commissions are probably going to have to come down at some point, because there’s just going to be increased competition among maybe even bigger PMs, or PMs that are smaller right now, but they have really tech-savvy people on their team. I think the competition is going to start to come from more upstart groups that have maybe these more tech-savvy teams. But one interesting thing that I noticed from the article was about owners and damage claims and things like that, and that’s one part of the business, like super unsexy is insurance and damage claims, things like that. And that’s a part, like that’s something, the huge component that automating would be fantastic. Like if you’re people, it’s such a time suck of figuring all of that out. So that’s like any operator out there with whatever AI tools you’re looking at. If you’re trying to think, what can I do right now that might really help the business and free up some time, figure out if you’re PMS or something you vibe code or something can help you deal with damage claims and insurance, because it is, that’s a Yeah, fair enough. 27:39 Agent Experience Shift One of, and this probably isn’t a surprise, and this ties in with everything else we’ve talked about today. One of my favorite quotes from the interview is, so my big prediction over the next 12 to 24 months is that we switch from a user experience to an agent experience. Beat that drum, beat that horse dead at this point. But we’re already talking about it. We’re seeing 175 million deflections from the Sabre a month or a day. That was a day. Obviously, this is going to happen. Now, can the companies adapt? Can we as an industry adapt fast enough to capitalize and to make sure we’re profitable on it? We got a question come in from Gabriel, and I just pulled the data real quick because I love the stats. I love the real-time data poll, Jamie. Yeah. If Devolve is deflecting 60 percent of inquiries with AI, what does that do to the guest experience benchmark? Are scores up, down, or flat? That is the real test. I just pulled point in their communication score and their overall score across Airbnb for the past 12 months, past 24 months. Their communication score past two years is up, past year is flat, and their overall score is actually up pretty significantly the past two years. So the fact that they are able to deflect 60 percent and at least maintain if not increase their overall scores is, and I think a pretty good benchmark. There is still an at around an industry average, like overall average for Evolve is a 4.71. So that’s not great, but that’s pretty typical for a large property management company. Unless you tell your AI to be grumpy that day, you don’t have human emotions on the experience side to weigh. So it makes sense why reviews scores shouldn’t change a whole lot. Well, and also think about so many of those comments are probably like, is there Wi-Fi? How far is the pool? All that kind of stuff. So when you then you have someone who’s irate or they’re super lost, they need someone to call them and get whatever like then you have those human agents that are probably now have more time to actually communicate with them. And then the AI is kind of getting rid of the riffraff or like here’s our FAQs, whatever. So I think that that is a bonus. But it’s a great point that we should be monitoring these. You know, any operator should, if you implement any of these kind of agenic tools, you should be monitoring those communication scores because the customer will tell you pretty quickly if it’s working or not. That’s real, almost real time feedback. Yeah. Amazing. Well, to put a bow on the Evolve stuff, sounds like they’re taking, we haven’t heard a whole lot about them in the industry for a little while, for whatever reason, at least I haven’t. But sounds like they’re taking all of the right steps that they need to be taking and they’re getting out ahead of this trend. Again, the companies that have the most data have the biggest advantage so long as they have good competent CTOs in place that are putting in steps to be ready for the future or ready for today, what we’re already seeing. So, fun episode, probably more technical than I’m good at. Yeah, someone was asking, the question started to get technical and I was like, ooh. But we are also learning in real time more about all of this. So, it’s exciting. My emotions about it oscillate week to week. Do you guys have anything fun coming up this week? Got the soccer game. Oh, yeah. World Cup starts, kickoff June 11th, Mexico, South Africa. It’s exciting. Yeah. I’m going on a one-night trip to Sarasota to go down to Prime, which I’m like, it’s a real boomerang trip, but I’m trying to commit to my, that’s a work trip, Michael, so that doesn’t count. I figured, no, it does not count. You got to go where work demands. Yes, exactly. We’ll save travels. Thank you. Excited to hear about the soccer games this week. It’ll be fun. Yeah, it should be interesting to see how a bunch of people in Auburn, Alabama react to soccer because that’s not a sport that we have in this city. So I’ll report back. Amazing. Well, thanks to all of our sponsors and all of our listeners. Amazing comments today. We love when the audience participates with us and asks us some interesting question. Shout out to Jamie for pulling real-time data right there at the end. So hope all of you guys have a great week and we will see you next Monday.

We use some essential cookies to make this website work. We’d like to set additional cookies to understand how you use GOV.UK, remember your settings and improve government services. We also use cookies set by other sites to help us deliver content from their services. You have accepted additional cookies.You canchange your cookie settingsat any time. You have rejected additional cookies.You canchange your cookie settingsat any time. Britain will become the first country in the world where it is impossible for children to take, share or view naked pictures on their devices. Photo: Getty Images Under the new plans, Big Tech companies like Apple and Google must activate built-in features or implement technical solutions on smartphones and tablets to detect and block nude images for children, the Prime Minister announced in a speech at London Tech Week today (Monday 8 June). This will prevent predators from being able to exploit and abuse victims through their devices, as well as stopping children from being able to access pornography. Adults will still be able to take, share or view nude content through an age verification process. Now is the time for tech companies to step up and work with government to solve this horrific issue. If companies do not act within 3 months, the government will bring forward legislation to force them to activate the technology. This will include fines for companies. Nothing is off the table, and as a last resort we are exploring criminal liability for tech bosses who fail to comply. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said: When it comes to the safety of our children, standing by is not an option. Nobody gets a free pass. That is why I’m making sure Britain is the first country in the world to make it impossible for children to take, share or view nude images. And I expect tech firms to make that happen. This is not an impossible challenge – these are some of the most innovative companies in the world. But if they choose not to, then we will act and change the law. The changes will apply to UK devices, including both existing and newly sold smartphones and tablets. Legislation could cover operating system providers and others in the supply chain, such as retailers, and will not affect the use of devices owned and used by adults who verify their age. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said: As a society, we have not kept pace with the changing threats that children face. Abuse online is far too common, and we will not tolerate it. Tech companies have a moral duty to act, by making it impossible for children to take, share or view nude images. If they don’t, we will legislate. These measures build on progress already made in the UK. Since the publication of the Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy, Apple has already taken significant steps to combat this harm and shown the art of the possible, launching world-first features in the UK. Apple recently introduced age checks for iPhone users, making it the first company to activate safety features by default for those who are not verified as over 18. This is a significant step forward following the government’s commitments to work with industry, and one this announcement builds on. Despite this, the nudity detection is not applied to the camera or broader apps, third-party messaging services, or search functions, meaning children can still take, view, share and save nude images. The government therefore wants Apple and Google to block nudity across the whole device by default, so they can only be deactivated via age assurance. Alongside the changes announced today, the consultation on children’s use of social media has now closed, with more than 100,000 responses received from parents, young people and experts. The government will publish its response soon and will continue working with international partners to tackle this shared global challenge to drive better protections for children online. Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said: No parent should have to worry that giving their child a smartphone opens the door to abuse and exploitation. We are holding social media platforms to account and will soon announce our next steps to keep children safe online. But this doesn’t stop with platforms; the devices themselves are part of the problem – and they can be part of the solution. Companies should switch these protections on by default, for every child, on every device. We are giving them 3 months to show us that they will do the right thing. 91% of online child sexual abuse reports recorded in 2024 contained self-generated content from children themselves and the average child now views pornography by age 13. The effects of this can have long lasting impacts on young people’s lives and contributes to abuse in younger relationships, with 39% of teenagers aged 13–17 experiencing emotional or physical abuse from a partner. Child sexual abuse material and pornography are also increasing misogyny and the normalisation of harmful sexual behaviour. 52% of all child sexual abuse and exploitation cases involve children aged 10–17 offending against other children. Chief Executive Officer of Internet Watch Foundation, Kerry Smith, said: On-device protections are a pivotal part of coordinated, multi-layered approach to safeguarding children online. An alarming amount of child sexual abuse material, which our analysts see every day, is self-generated by children as a result of grooming, coercion or manipulation. We need device-level detection and blocking alongside platform-level protections. That is why we warmly welcome the government’s announcement and see these protections as playing a powerful role in a whole-system response to the threats children face in digital spaces. With nudity blocking in place, it will make it much harder to create new images and videos of child sexual abuse and better protect children from harms on the internet. Measures to protect children already exist within smartphones and tablets, but are applied inconsistently, often switched off by default and only blurring content rather than blocking it. But the government is working closely with technology companies – some of whom, like Apple, have already taken steps to implement protective features – to make this goal a reality. Companies must introduce these measures without threatening privacy or collecting any data. The device should simply block harmful content across all apps and services. Over-18s will still be able to view adult content by providing proof of age. British safety tech firm SafeToNet has shown this change is already achievable, with software that blocks nude content and prevents images being taken if the camera detects a child. Richard Pursey, Chairman of SafeTo Net, said: The government is right to act. Children have been failed for too long. This news will be welcomed by parents across the UK and hopefully, will inspire other countries to follow the UK’s lead. We can put an end to so much online misery with this approach. SafeToNet’s HarmBlock technology is a proven example that it is possible to make the device safe by default and not as some optional add-on. We have proven that with HarmBlock, on-device, tamperproof, embedded safeguards can prevent children from seeing, filming and broadcasting explicit content. It works in real-time including livestream and crucially also protects the privacy rights of the child as no data enters or leaves the application. Let’s be blunt: manufacturers have built devices capable of facilitating illegal, explicit, image-based harm to children. That’s the reality. But with this world-leading announcement we are finally shifting the battle ground of a child’s online safety to the device. The Online Safety Act was a landmark step forward in holding companies to account, but the government is clear that more must be done. Big Tech has the money and capability to put a stop to this. Online harms must be confronted with the same urgency as offline abuse. This announcement makes clear that, in the modern world, the technology industry is central to this mission. Protecting children from sexual abuse should not be optional – it is a moral duty. Roxy Longworth, author and founder of Behind Our Screens, said: I told myself, back in 2021, that if I went public with what happened to me and it stopped one life from being ruined, then it was worth it, but the more I campaigned the angrier I became. Every child needs to be protected from platforms who for far too long have been allowed to turn a blind eye to the damage being done to them. This announcement makes me hopeful that there won’t be kids sat in their room feeling the same pressure and shame that consumed my teenage years. Sara Kirkpatrick CEO of Welsh Women’s Aid, said: We are delighted to see proposals which require tech companies to design in safety rather than leaving the responsibility solely on parents and young people to ‘keep themselves safe’. We would call on the government to ensure that expectation, and regulation is coupled with monitoring and effective sanctions for non compliance. Chief Executive of the NSPCC, Chris Sherwood, said: Online grooming, sexual exploitation and the proliferation of child sexual abuse material could be prevented if tech companies did the right thing and introduced nudity blocking technology on children’s phones. Every day these protections are not in place, more children will continue to face devastating harm in the online world. That’s why we strongly support the government’s decision to make it mandatory for these companies to block inappropriate material at device level. This marks a major step forward in our fight against online child sexual abuse. Time is up for Big Tech. Now government must focus on holding them to account to ensure this transformational change for young people’s safety is quickly delivered. Dr Elly Hanson, Strategy Director for CEASE, said: Device level tech to prevent all children seeing, sending or receiving explicit imagery will be a total game changer in the battle against online child abuse and the harms of pornography. We wholeheartedly support the government’s demand on tech companies to roll this out, and see legislation that mandates it as the critical and necessary next step. For far too long, many thousands of people have sexually abused and extorted children online because tech companies have let them – giving them all the access and tools they need. In tandem pornography has further fuelled abuse and violated young people’s right to author a sexuality rooted in respect and connection. This tech will tackle both problems, bringing us a major step closer in ending this appalling profit-driven experiment on our children. Dame Rachel de Souza, Children’s Commissioner for England, said: One child seeing porn is one too many – but my research shows more than a quarter (27%) of young people who had seen porn said they had seen it online by 11. Tech firms have the power to turn it off but have dragged their feet. I fully support requiring devices to have Highly Effective Age Assurance and content-screening technology in place. This will create an additional layer of protection for children against the harmful content that we know is causing them harm. There are no silver bullets to making the online world safe, that’s why I also want to see platforms and services banned from accessing under 18s until they can prove they are safe. But device level protections are one thing that will meaningfully limit children’s access to harmful content. Lynn Perry, chief executive of Barnardo’s, said: Far too many children are exposed to harmful sexual content online or are pressured into sharing sexual images. Barnardo’s research found that a quarter of all young people have seen a nude photo which was originally sent privately and then shared further – while around one in seven 13- to 15-year-old girls have been asked to share a nude photo of themselves. The impact of this can last a lifetime. This is a strong step from the government towards keeping children safe and we look forward to seeing how these proposals will work in practice. Good intentions are not enough, however, so they need to be backed up by strong regulation and enforcement – as well as keeping pace with how quickly online harms evolve. It is absolutely vital that the focus also remains on protecting children, not criminalising them. Any system must make sure that children who share images are supported, not shamed, and that strong reporting and safeguarding mechanisms are in place. Online or offline, child safety must come first. Technology companies need to build it in from the start. Lawrence Jordan, Marie Collins Foundation CEO, said: At the Marie Collins Foundation, we see first-hand the devastating and lasting impact that online grooming, sexual extortion and image-based abuse can have on children, young people and their families. For many victims and survivors, the harm does not end when the abuse itself ends – whether through the fear that images may continue to circulate, or the lasting impact abuse can have on mental health, relationships and a person’s sense of safety and trust. We strongly welcome the government’s focus on device-level protections. For too long, much of our response to online harm has come after abuse has already occurred. Technology companies have repeatedly shown they can solve complex challenges when they choose to prioritise them. Protecting children should be one of those priorities. Companies now have an opportunity – and a moral responsibility – to ensure the digital environments children use every day are safe for them to participate in. David Wright CBE, CEO of SWGfL and UK Safer Internet Centre Director, said: This is an important and ambitious step in recognising the scale of harm children face online, particularly as sexual abuse and exploitation are increasingly linked to self-generated imagery. We have seen positive progress from parts of the technology sector in recent years, but more must be done to ensure a consistent and high standard of protection for all children across devices and services. Raising the baseline of safety across the digital ecosystem is essential. As these proposals develop, it will be important to ensure they are effective in practice, proportionate, and implemented in ways that maintain trust, particularly in relation to privacy and the needs of victims. At SWGfL, we look forward to continuing to work with government and industry to ensure protections are victim-focused and genuinely reduce harm. Dr Alexandra Bailey, Head of Psychology at child protection charity Lucy Faithfull Foundation and Associate Professor at the University of Roehampton, says: Our work with both adults and young people tells us how damaging exposure to sexual content online can be at a young age, and therefore we welcome the government’s announcement [today] on stronger online protections for children. We see firsthand how sending and receiving nudes, and early exposure to pornography, can cause real harm in young people’s lives, leaving them vulnerable to grooming, exploitation or viewing illegal, harmful content themselves. Through our anonymous Shore live chat service, we support young people navigating these issues every day. In our work with adults whose pornography use has become problematic and escalated into harmful or illegal behaviour, many tell us this developed over time and often began with exposure at a young age. What begins as curiosity can shift over time. People can become desensitised to mainstream content and seek out more extreme material, sometimes crossing into illegal territory without fully realising the consequences. This is one of the most common pathways to online child sexual abuse we see on our anonymous Stop It Now helpline. If you’re concerned about what you or someone else has seen or done online, contact Shore or Stop It Now for anonymous and confidential support. Soma Sara, CEO of Everyone’s Invited, said: At Everyone’s Invited, we welcome this announcement. Over the past 5 years, through our education programmes in schools across the UK, we have witnessed a significant increase in the sharing and creation of child sexual abuse material online, alongside rapidly evolving technologies that are amplifying harm. For too long, the responsibility has fallen disproportionately on children and young people to protect themselves from the non-consensual sharing of images and other forms of online abuse. The burden must now shift to the platforms and services that enable and profit from digital engagement. With the continued rise in child sexual abuse material, the time to act is now. We urge technology companies, platform providers, and those who work with them to treat this announcement as a foundation rather than a finish line and to proactively go further in strengthening safeguards for children. The emergence of AI-enabled harms and increasing access to violent pornography are accelerating risks and normalising harmful behaviours. Addressing these challenges requires sustained action, stronger accountability, and a clear commitment from all of us to put children’s safety first. Farah Nazeer, Chief Executive of Women’s Aid, comments: Despite it being a criminal offence to create or share explicit images of a child, the reality is that sharing nude images is still prevalent among children and young people, with many feeling coerced into doing so. Under no circumstances should coercive control and pressure be applied to a child to share intimate images of themselves and we welcome any measures that will make the taking and sharing of such images more difficult. This form of abuse is just as real, and just as damaging to the wellbeing of children and young people as other forms of violence against women and children – it is high time that technology companies are held to account and do more to ensure that the most vulnerable of their users are safe. Sara Kirkpatrick, CEO of Welsh Women’s Aid, said: We are delighted to see proposals which require tech companies to design in safety rather than leaving the responsibility solely on parents and young people to ‘keep themselves safe’. We would call on the government to ensure that expectation, and regulation is coupled with monitoring and effective sanctions for non compliance. The following links open in a new tab Do not include personal or financial information like your National Insurance number or credit card details. To help us improve GOV.UK, we’d like to know more about your visit today.Please fill in this survey (opens in a new tab).

Israel-headquartered developer Eco Wave Power is engaged in talks with Florida Atlantic University (FAU) and the University of Michigan to explore the development of artificial intelligence (AI)-driven wave energy applications, WaveGPT, and next-generation wave-powered coastal data center infrastructure designed to support the rapidly growing energy demands of AI. Eco Wave Power is advancing discussions with Florida Atlantic University and the University of Michigan focused on two complementary tracks designed to position the firm at the intersection of renewable energy and AI infrastructure, with the first track centered on the continued development of WaveGPT. This is the company’s AI-driven operational intelligence platform designed to transform real-time operational data from the Israeli player’s wave energy installations into actionable insights through predictive analytics, forecasting, anomaly detection, performance optimization, and digital twin technologies. To this end, Eco Wave Power recently submitted a TEAMER application with Florida Atlantic University focused on data-driven energy flow mapping, operational intelligence, and predictive analytics for the company’s wave energy technology, seeking to leverage advanced AI methodologies to enhance system performance, improve operational planning, and support future commercial deployments. On the other hand, the second track is set on a potential collaborative grant submission involving Eco Wave Power, Florida Atlantic University, and the University of Michigan aimed at developing a wave-powered, AI-optimized coastal data center concept. This initiative aims to combine wave energy generation, advanced cooling technologies, digital twins, energy storage, and intelligent workload management into a unified platform capable of supporting future coastal AI and edge-computing infrastructure. This content is available after accepting the cookies. Drones tested for wave energy floaters maintenance (Video) Inna Braverman, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Eco Wave Power, commented:“AI is expected to become one of the largest drivers of electricity demand in the coming decade. We believe wave energy can play a meaningful role in supporting the next generation of coastal digital infrastructure. “By combining wave energy, AI optimization, advanced cooling technologies, and digital twins, we are exploring how renewable energy can directly support the rapidly expanding needs of AI-driven data centers and edge computing facilities.” The proposed initiatives build upon Eco Wave Power’s broader strategy of integrating artificial intelligence, predictive analytics, digital twins, and renewable energy generation to create intelligent energy infrastructure capable of supporting future industrial and digital economies. While discussions and grant applications remain subject to review, funding approvals, and final agreements among the parties, the Israeli player believes these initiatives have the potential to create a new category of AI-enabled renewable energy infrastructure and further expand the firm’s role within the rapidly evolving energy landscape. The company’s focus on AI-enabled energy infrastructure and digital twin technologies has recently gained international visibility, as it was featured during NVIDIA Founder and CEOJensen Huang‘s GTC keynote presentations in both San Jose and Taipei, where the firm’s technology was showcased as part of demonstrations highlighting simulation, digital twins, and real-world infrastructure applications. The concept is based on the premise that future data centers will require not only significantly more electricity, but also intelligent energy management and innovative cooling solutions. Eco Wave Power and its academic partners aim to explore new approaches for powering the AI economy with clean energy by locating data centers in coastal environments and integrating them directly with renewable energy generation and seawater-assisted cooling technologies. Based on the project concept, the proposed platform would utilize AI-driven digital twins capable of forecasting wave conditions, computing workloads, cooling requirements, storage availability, and grid conditions in real time, enabling optimized operation across the entire energy-water-compute ecosystem. This content is available after accepting the cookies. Eco Wave Power enters deal for potential financing of global wave energy projects Dr. Yufei Tang, Director of the FPL Center for Intelligent Energy Technologies (InETech) at Florida Atlantic University, highlighted:“Artificial intelligence is transforming how energy systems are designed, monitored, and optimized. “By combining marine renewable energy, advanced digital twins, predictive analytics, and intelligent control systems, we have an opportunity to develop next-generation energy infrastructure that is both sustainable and adaptive to rapidly evolving energy demands.” Take the spotlight and anchor your brand in the heart of the offshore world! Join us for a bigger impact and amplify your presence at the core hub of the offshore energy community!

Dopo la nuova aggressione di Israele al Libano con conseguente controffeniva iraniana, la tensione è tornata a crescere in Medio oriente e nei mari dell’area. L’esercito israeliano ha dichiarato di aver colpito un impianto petrolchimico nel sud-ovest dell’Iran, oltre a obiettivi militari nell’Iran occidentale e centrale, in rappresaglia per gli attacchi missilistici iraniani contro il nord di Israele, lanciati in risposta agli attacchi israeliani contro obiettivi di Hezbollah a Beirut. Il conflitto militare si è rapidamente esteso anche ai mercati marittimi. Il petrolio Brent è salito di quasi il 5% in seguito alla notizia, raggiungendo circa 97 dollari al barile, mentre gli operatori valutavano il rischio di ulteriori interruzioni alle esportazioni di petrolio dal Medio Oriente. Intanto il movimento Houthi yemenita ha annunciato quello che ha definito un “divieto totale di navigazione” per le navi israeliane nel Mar Rosso e ha avvertito che le imbarcazioni collegate a Israele saranno considerate obiettivi militari. Secondo la società di brokeraggio navale Braemar le prospettive per il mercato delle petroliere dipendono fortemente da quando il traffico normale potrà riprendere attraverso Hormuz. “Una rapida riapertura dello Stretto di Hormuz sosterrebbe le tariffe di trasporto” ha affermato Braemar, sostenendo che i premi di rischio e la ricostituzione delle scorte creerebbero un’ulteriore domanda di petroliere una volta che le esportazioni si saranno riprese. Tuttavia, il broker ritiene che un’interruzione prolungata rimanga lo scenario più probabile. “Se Hormuz dovesse rimanere chiuso a tutte le petroliere tranne una manciata, il che al momento ci sembra l’esito più probabile per i prossimi sei mesi circa, il crollo della domanda sostituirà rapidamente il prelievo delle scorte, poiché i paesi cercheranno di preservare le riserve di approvvigionamento ormai esaurite”. Braemar ha avvertito che una riapertura di breve durata, seguita da un’altra lunga chiusura, potrebbe creare ulteriore pressione sui mercati del trasporto merci, aumentando l’offerta di navi al di fuori del Golfo Persico mentre la domanda si indebolisce. Anche i mercati delle navi cisterna per prodotti raffinati vengono rimodellati da questa situazione dirompente. Secondo Poten & Partners, circa 5 milioni di barili al giorno di esportazioni dal Golfo sono stati interrotti, mentre circa 3 milioni di barili al giorno di capacità di raffinazione sono stati costretti a fermarsi durante il conflitto. Secondo il broker, gli Stati Uniti sono emersi come il principale fornitore di prodotti sostitutivi a livello mondiale, aumentando la produzione delle raffinerie e inviando carichi verso destinazioni che normalmente si rifornirebbero di prodotti dal Medio Oriente o dall’Asia. Le esportazioni statunitensi si sono espanse oltre i mercati tradizionali dell’America Latina, includendo paesi come Australia, Turchia e Namibia, generando un forte aumento della domanda in tonnellate-miglio. Inizialmente, questo cambiamento ha innescato guadagni record per le petroliere, poiché la dislocazione delle navi e i flussi commerciali di sostituzione hanno ridotto la disponibilità di tonnellaggio. Tuttavia, Poten ha osservato che da allora gli aumenti dei noli si sono moderati, man mano che le rotte commerciali si sono adattate alla nuova realtà. Il prossimo andamento dei mercati delle petroliere dipenderà in larga misura dagli sviluppi in Medio Oriente. “Un’apertura ritardata finirà per mettere a dura prova le scorte globali di prodotti raffinati, limitando la disponibilità dei prodotti e facendo impennare i prezzi, con conseguente crollo della domanda. Questo è un fattore negativo per le tariffe delle petroliere” ha affermato Poten.c ISCRIVITI ALLA NEWSLETTER QUOTIDIANA GRATUITA DI SHIPPING ITALY SHIPPING ITALY E’ ANCHE SU WHATSAPP: BASTA CLICCARE QUI PER ISCRIVERSI AL CANALE ED ESSERE SEMPRE AGGIORNATI

The Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo has been around long enough that the concept doesn’t need much introduction. It’s a laptop with two displays. What’s different about theAsus ROG Zephyrus Duo 2026model is the scale of the second one: where previous generations offered something closer to a wide secondary strip with display ambitions, this year’s Zephyrus Duo pairs a primary 16” panel with a second 16” panel of identical spec. Two full-size OLED displays, same 3K resolution, same 120Hz refresh rate, in a chassis that weighs just 2.8kg. It’s a unique concept for a gaming laptop - Asus has been at this with the ZenBook Duo for a couple of years - and they have made it work here, too. A full second screen changes what you can actually do with the machine. Streamers can keep OBS visible without eating into their primary display. Editors can run a timeline and a preview window simultaneously without squinting. GAmers who want a walkthrough or Discord open alongside their game no longer have to make that a compromise. The Zephyrus Duo has always had a clear audience in mind - people who live with two monitors on their desk and don’t want to give that up when they leave it - and the 2026 model is the first version where the hardware matches the pitch in a more complete way. At AED 33,999, this is firmly in flagship territory. The spec sheet explains the number: an Intel Core Ultra 9 386H, up to an RTX 5090 Laptop GPU with 24GB of GDDR7, 64GB of LPDDR5X memory, and those two OLED panels with G-Sync, HDR True Black 1000 certification, and factory-calibrated color accuracy. This isn’t a monitor you buy because it’s the most accessible entry point into dual-screen laptops. It’s the one you buy because nothing else does what it does at this scale. The structural challenge with a laptop like this starts at the hinge. Two 16” OLED displays are heavy, and a pivot point that can’t hold them steady under typing or touch input undermines the whole concept. Asus went with a dual-torsion-spring, two-stage cam design that handles both sides of the problem: the initial resistance is low enough that the lid lifts with one hand, and once it reaches a working angle the torque increases and the screen stays put. It holds up well under touch input without the panel moving around, which sounds like a baseline requirement but genuinely isn’t straightforward at this size and weight. The chassis itself is CNC-milled aluminium in Stellar Gray. It’s rigid, it doesn’t creak under pressure, and the overall build quality tracks with what you would expect from a machine at this price. The lid carries the Slash Lighting array - 35 individually addressable zones that replace the AniMe Vision display on previous Zephyrus models - which can be customized through Armoury Crate or switched off entirely if you would prefer the laptop not announce itself across a meeting room. Because of the dual-screen design, the keyboard is wireless. It’s 5.1mm thin, and 1.7mm of key travel keeps it from feeling as shallow as those numbers suggest. The deck has an oil-resistant fabric finish, and the touchpad is notably larger than what most gaming laptops offer. In Laptop Mode the keyboard docks beneath the upper display and charges automatically, which removes the main inconvenience of wireless keyboards day-to-day. Asus has built five operating modes around the second display, and each one is designed around a specific real-world scenario rather than existing purely on a spec sheet. Dual Screen Mode is the default, and where most users will spend the majority of their time. Both 16” panels are fully independent - you can run two separate applications side by side at full size, which is the closest a laptop has come to replicate a dual-monitor desk setup without external hardware. Laptop Mode deactivates the second panel and docks the keyboard, giving you a conventional single-screen experience for lighter tasks, travel, or whenever the extra display isn’t needed. Battery life is also meaningfully better in this configuration, which is worth keeping in mind before long meetings. Sharing mode uses the 320-degree hinge to lay both panels completely flat on a table, mirroring content on each so two people can view the same screen from opposite sides. It’s a cleaner solution to the “turn the laptop around” problem. Book Mode puts both displays in portrait orientation, producing an unusually tall canvas that developers and anyone who works in long documents will find useful rather than gimmicky. Tent Mode props the machine into an A-frame for co-op gaming on a single device - specific, but it works cleanly. ScreenXpert is the software layer that holds all of this together, and it’s very well implemented together. It handles independent brightness control per panel, lets you swap content between screens without fussing through display settings, and detects orientation automatically when you physically change modes. The option to kill the second display entirely to save battery is straightforward to access, which matters when you are working away from a charger. Without ScreenXpert keeping the dual-panel setup manageable, the five-mode system would be a lot more cumbersome in practice. Both displays are 3K (2880x1800), 16:!0, OLED, running at 120Hz with a 0.2ms response time. Peak brightness is 1,100 nits and both carry VESA DisplayHDR True Black 1000 certification along with Dolby Vision support. For anyone doing color-critical work, 100% DCI-P3 coverage and factory-calibrated Delta <1 out of the box puts the Zephyrus Duo in credible territory for photo and video editing alongside gaming - not as a secondary consideration, but as a genuine capability of the hardware. The primary upper panel also supports G-SYNC, which required some collaboration between Asus, NVIDIA and Samsung to make work on OLED. The implementation runs the Panel’s Pixel Refresh Rate at 960Hz rather than the standard 480Hz, widening the variable refresh range enough for adaptive sync to function properly. The practical result is tear-free output at OLED contrast levels, which has historically been a difficult combination to achieve on a laptop display. 120Hz puts the Zephyrus Duo squarely in the enthusiast gaming and content creation bracket rather than the competitive esports one. Asus makes this clear, pointing to the ROG Strix line for players who want faster refresh panels, such as 300Hz. For the audience this machine is built for, 120Hz on a 3K OLED panel is the right balance - and it looks excellent in practice for both the gaming and the creative side of that equation. The top configuration pairs an Intel Core Ultra 9 386H - 16 cores, 16 threads, up to 50 TOPS from the integrated NPU - with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop GPU carrying 24GB of GDDR7 memory. In Cinebench 2024, the CPU hits 1,028 points multi-core in Performance Mode and climbs to 1,278 in Manual, which gives you a sense of how much headroom the different operating modes actually unlock. Single-core sits at 124 across most modes, which is where you want it for gaming workloads that lean on clock speed over core count. On the GPU side, 3DMark Time Spy puts the graphics score at 19,082 in Performance Mode and 21,267 in Turbo - numbers that make sense for a GPU running at 110W in its default mode. The Port Royal ray tracing test comes in at 12,768 in Performance and 14,188 in Turbo. In actual gaming at the panel’s native 3K resolution, Forza Horizon 5 avengers 111.8fps in Performance Mode and 122.3fps in Turbo. Playing at the display’s native resolution and comfortably clearing 100fps in a demanding title is the kind of result that makes the trade-offs in the TGP targets feel reasonable. Metro Exodus with RT enabled at 2K averages 78fps in Performance Mode and 86fps in Turbo - more than playable with RT on, and with DLSS 4’s MFG in the mix for supported titles, those frame rate floors go considerably higher. That TGP conversation is worth understanding before buying. Performance Mode runs the GPU at 110W, Turbo at 135W, Manual at 150W. Thicker gaming laptops with the same GPU run higher by default, and the numbers reflect that. The Zephyrus Duo is not trying to compete with a desktop replacement on raw throughput - it’s asking whether you can live with a slightly lower peak performance in exchange for a machine that weighs 2.8kg and fits two full OLED panels into it. For most people reading this, the answer is probably yes. Memory tops out at 64GB of LPDDR5X at 8533MT/s. Storage is up to 2TB on a PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD in the primary slot, with a second PCIe 4.0 M.2 slot available for expansion. Both are accessible through a dedicated panel at the rear without a full teardown. Most gaming laptops pull intake air through the keyboard area. The Zephyrus Duo’s wireless keyboard means that path doesn't exist, which forces a different approach to moving heat around. A custom vapour chamber covers 45% of the motherboard. A Graphite Nano-Insulated Film sits between the board and the OLED panel to manage thermal transfer. The fans are tuned for a 207-degree exhaust angle across three vents. The hinge gap is also slightly larger on the Zephyrus Duo than on the ZenBook Duo specifically to accommodate the higher power envelope. Under gaming load in Performance Mode the system runs at around 43dB. Audible in a quiet room, not disruptive with headphones on. Silent Mode holds below 35dB, and at low enough temps the fans drop to zero before ramping back when thermals climb. Armoury Crate’s Scenario Profiles let you assign different operating modes per game, so noisier titles can run in Turbo while lighter ones stay in Performance without manually switching each time. The speaker setup is a six-driver array - four woofers and two tweeters - with Dolby Atmos and a claimed 122% volume increase over the previous Duo generation. Low-end extension reportedly reaches 100Hz, which is more ambitious than most laptop audio systems both with. The integrated microphone covers three modes: 360-degree for zoom recordings. Single-Presenter for calls, and Multi-Presenter for shared-space meetings. Two-Way AI Noise Cancellation handles both the input and incoming audio, and runs on the CPU so it doesn’t compete with the GPU during gameplay. Noise cancellation can also be applied per-app, which means it filters voice chat without touching in-game audio. Port selection is comprehensive. HDMI 2.1, two USB-A 3.2 Gen 2, two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C with DP 2.1 and 100W power delivery each, a UHS-II SD card slot, and a 3.5mm combo jack. The 250W adapter is the primary charger, but USB-C charging up to 100W means leaving it at home for lighter use days is an option. WiFi 7 handles wireless, with a redesigned cavity antenna that’s built to maintain signal through the metal enclosure and in dense multi-storey environments where reception tends to fall off. The 90Wh battery charges to 50% in around 30mins on the bundled adapter. Running both displays under a gaming load will work through it faster than a single-screen setup - that’s the honest reality of dual OLEDs and RTX 5090 rumbling inside. Laptop Mode with one panel active gives you the best-case battery scenario when you are away from a socket. Buying the Zephyrus Duo in the UAE comes with a couple of extras worth knowing about. Register your devices as an Asus Member within 90days of purchase and you will receive a free year ofAsus Perfect Warranty- accidental damage coverage that includes drops, liquid spills, electrical surges, and breakage like cracked screens or damaged hinges. It’s a one claim per year, handled through certified Asus service centres, and it’s a reasonable safety net on a machine with two OLED panels and a hinge that sees daily use. On the ROG side, purchasing the Zephyrus Duo also gets you points through theROG Elite rewardsprogramme. Points accumulate through product registration and other activities, and can be redeemed for game codes, ROG wallpapers, and gift cards. It’s a neat loyalty programme, and if you are already in the ROG ecosystem it’s worth signing up for. -- TheAsus ROG Zephyrus Duo 2026is priced at AED 33,999 in the UAE. For a machine with dual 16” OLED panels and the hardware to drive them properly, that’s what the component list adds up to. If you have been waiting for a dual-screen gaming laptop where both displays are actually the same size and quality, this is the first one that delivers on that. If your priority is maximum frame rates above 120Hz, or a chassis lighter than 2.8kg, the ROG Strix line is the better first. For everyone else - particularly the streamers, editors, and multitaskers the Zephyrus Duo is clearly designed around - it does exactly what it says on the tin.

MIAMI, June 08, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd. (NYSE: NCLH) today released its 2025Sail & Sustain®Report, highlighting progress across the Company’s global sustainability strategy and its five foundational pillars: Caring for Nature, Sailing Safely, Empowering People, Strengthening Our Communities, and Operating with Integrity & Accountability. Throughout 2025, the Company continued advancing initiatives across its operations, workforce, supply chain, and destinations through a focus on collaboration, innovation, and continuous improvement. “OurSail & Sustainprogram is designed to support resilience, discipline and long-term value creation,” said John W. Chidsey, chief executive officer of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd. “The progress outlined in this year’s report reflects the dedication of our team members and partners around the world as we continue to strengthen our business, support our communities, and advance our sustainability journey.” Key highlights from the 2025 Sail & Sustain report include: The full 2025 Sail & Sustain report is available atwww.nclhltd.com/sustainability.About Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd.Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd. (NYSE: NCLH) is a leading global cruise company which operates Norwegian Cruise Line, Oceania Cruises and Regent Seven Seas Cruises. With a combined fleet of 35 ships and ~75,000 Berths, NCLH offers itineraries to approximately 700 destinations worldwide. NCLH expects to add 16 additional ships across its three brands through 2037, which will add ~43,000 Berths to its fleet. To learn more, visit www.nclhltd.com. Cautionary Statement Concerning Forward-Looking StatementsSome of the statements, estimates or projections contained in this release are “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the U.S. federal securities laws intended to qualify for the safe harbor from liability established by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements other than statements of historical facts contained, or incorporated by reference, in this release, including, without limitation, statements related to Board composition and our value creation initiatives, our expectations regarding our results of operations, future financial position, including our future capital expenditures, plans, prospects, actions taken or strategies being considered with respect to our liquidity position, expected fleet additions and deliveries, including expected timing thereof, our expectations regarding the impact of macroeconomic conditions and recent global events, and expectations relating to our sustainability program, decarbonization efforts, and alternative fuel sources and related regulation may be forward-looking statements. Many, but not all, of these statements can be found by looking for words like “expect,” “anticipate,” “goal,” “project,” “plan,” “believe,” “seek,” “will,” “may,” “forecast,” “estimate,” “intend,” “future” and similar words. Forward-looking statements do not guarantee future performance and may involve risks, uncertainties and other factors which could cause our actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from the future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied in those forward-looking statements. Examples of these risks, uncertainties and other factors include, but are not limited to the impact of: adverse general economic factors, such as fluctuating or increasing levels of interest rates, inflation, unemployment, underemployment, tariff increases and trade wars, the volatility of fuel prices, declines in the securities and real estate markets, and perceptions of these conditions that decrease the level of disposable income of consumers or consumer confidence; our indebtedness and restrictions in the agreements governing our indebtedness that require us to maintain minimum levels of liquidity and be in compliance with maintenance covenants and otherwise limit our flexibility in operating our business, including the significant portion of assets that are collateral under these agreements; our ability to work with lenders and others or otherwise pursue options to defer, renegotiate, refinance or restructure our existing debt profile, near-term debt amortization, newbuild-related payments and other obligations and to work with credit card processors to satisfy current or potential future demands for collateral on cash advanced from customers relating to future cruises; our need for additional financing or financing to optimize our balance sheet, which may not be available on favorable terms, or at all, and our outstanding exchangeable notes and any future financing which may be dilutive to existing shareholders; shareholder activism and/or proxy contests; the unavailability of ports of call and the impacts of port and destination fees and expenses; future increases in the price of, or major changes, disruptions or reductions in, commercial airline services; changes involving the tax and environmental regulatory regimes in which we operate, including new and existing regulations aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions; the accuracy of any appraisals of our assets; our success in controlling operating expenses and capital expenditures; adverse events impacting the security of travel, or customer perceptions of the security of travel, such as terrorist acts, geopolitical conflict, armed conflict or threats thereof, acts of piracy, and other international events; public health crises, and their effect on the ability or desire of people to travel (including on cruises); adverse incidents involving cruise ships; our ability to maintain and strengthen our brand; breaches in data security or other disturbances to our information technology systems and other networks or our actual or perceived failure to comply with requirements regarding data privacy and protection; changes in fuel prices and the type of fuel we are permitted to use and/or other cruise operating costs; mechanical malfunctions and repairs, delays in our shipbuilding program, maintenance and refurbishments and the consolidation of qualified shipyard facilities; the risks and increased costs associated with operating internationally; our inability to recruit or retain qualified personnel or the loss of key personnel or employee relations issues; impacts related to climate change and our ability to achieve our climate-related or other sustainability goals; our inability to obtain adequate insurance coverage; implementing precautions in coordination with regulators and global public health authorities to protect the health, safety and security of guests, crew and the communities we visit and to comply with related regulatory restrictions; pending or threatened litigation, investigations and enforcement actions; volatility and disruptions in the global credit and financial markets, which may adversely affect our ability to borrow and could increase our counterparty credit risks, including those under our credit facilities, derivatives, contingent obligations, insurance contracts and new ship progress payment guarantees; our reliance on third parties to provide hotel management services for certain ships and certain other services; fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates; our expansion into new markets and investments in new markets, businesses and land-based destination projects; overcapacity in key markets or globally; and other factors set forth under “Risk Factors” in our most recently filed Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The above examples are not exhaustive and new risks emerge from time to time. There may be additional risks that we currently consider immaterial or which are unknown. Such forward-looking statements are based on our current beliefs, assumptions, expectations, estimates and projections regarding our present and future business strategies and the environment in which we expect to operate in the future. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements included in this release, which speak only as of the date made. We expressly disclaim any obligation or undertaking to release publicly any updates or revisions to any forward-looking statement to reflect any change in our expectations with regard thereto or any change of events, conditions or circumstances on which any such statement was based, except as required by law. Media Contact:NCLHMedia@nclcorp.com

L’Autorità del Canale di Panama ha emesso un avviso alle compagnie di navigazione annunciando l’intenzione di ridurre il pescaggio massimo autorizzato per le chiuse Neopanamax. Una nota ha specificato che si tratta di una misura precauzionale basata sugli insegnamenti tratti dalla siccità del 2023-2024 e che dovrebbe avere un impatto immediato limitato sul traffico marittimo, ma ha espresso preoccupazione dato che i livelli di transito sono ai massimi storici. La restrizione ridurrà il limite di pescaggio di mezzo piede, portandolo a un massimo di 49,5 piedi (15 metri), a partire dal 1° luglio. Fino a metà maggio, l’autorità aveva affermato di non prevedere la necessità di introdurre restrizioni, ma di stare monitorando attentamente la situazione. Panama ha registrato una stagione delle piogge insolitamente umida, con precipitazioni che si sono protratte anche durante le ore diurne. Le autorità hanno inoltre comunicato di aver già adottato ulteriori misure di risparmio idrico a partire da dicembre 2025. La preoccupazione, tuttavia, deriva dalle previsioni che indicano un indebolimento quasi certo degli alisei del Pacifico e un conseguente aumento della temperatura dell’acqua, fenomeno noto come “El Niño”. Secondo più fonti gli effetti supereranno quelli registrati negli anni recenti, incluso il 2023/2024. L’ultimo El Niño del 2023/2024 ha avuto un grave impatto sulle operazioni del Canale di Panama. Sono stati annunciati ripetutamente provvedimenti per ridurre il pescaggio a un valore compreso tra 43 e 44 piedi, fino a un minimo di 38,5 piedi ed è stato ridotto il numero di transiti giornalieri, causando notevoli problematiche al traffico marittimo. Secondo quanto riportato dall’associazione di categoria Bimco, il Canale di Panama ha già registrato un aumento stimato dell’8% del traffico quest’anno. L’associazione ha attribuito l’incremento al maggior numero di petroliere e navi gasiere, dovuto in parte alla chiusura dello Stretto di Hormuz e all’aumento delle esportazioni statunitensi verso l’Asia, nel tentativo di compensare la carenza di approvvigionamenti provenienti dal Medio Oriente. I dati online del Canale di Panama mostrano che al 5 giugno risultavano 58 navi con prenotazione in attesa di transito e nove senza prenotazione. Il tempo di attesa per le navi senza prenotazione dirette a sud è salito vertiginosamente a una media di 10,6 giorni. In direzione nord, invece, il tempo di attesa rimane di 2,2 giorni, dopo aver raggiunto un picco di 13,6 giorni a metà maggio. È probabile che il numero di navi in ​​attesa aumenti nei prossimi giorni, poiché la corsia est delle chiuse di Gatun rimarrà chiusa per manutenzione a secco dal 9 al 17 giugno. Le navi dovranno alternarsi in un’unica corsia, con un numero di transiti programmati ridotto a soli 16 slot giornalieri attraverso le chiuse Panamax. Si tratta di circa la metà rispetto alle normali operazioni, che prevedono fino a 40 transiti al giorno tra le chiuse Neopanamax e Panamax. L’Autorità del Canale di Panama ha dichiarato che i suoi specialisti stanno monitorando attentamente le condizioni meteorologiche. Esamineranno le proiezioni settimanalmente per valutare il potenziale impatto e continueranno a considerare possibili azioni da intraprendere nei prossimi mesi per gestire le possibili difficoltà operative. ISCRIVITI ALLA NEWSLETTER QUOTIDIANA GRATUITA DI SHIPPING ITALY SHIPPING ITALY E’ ANCHE SU WHATSAPP: BASTA CLICCARE QUI PER ISCRIVERSI AL CANALE ED ESSERE SEMPRE AGGIORNATI

Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone (APSEZ), India’s largest integrated transport utility that is part of the globally diversified Adani Group, has won a decade-long marine services contract for Argentina’s first liquefied natural gas (LNG) export, marking its entry into South America and expanding its international marine services footprint. The contract has been awarded to APSEZ’s step-down subsidiary,Adani Harbour International FZCO, through a consortium with Argentina-basedMeridian Group, following a global competitive tender process conducted bySouthern Energy S.A. (SESA). This award is perceived to strengthen the Asian firm’s presence across international energy logistics value chains. Ashwani Gupta, Whole-time Director and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at APSEZ, commented:“This project reflects our growing capability to support large-scale energy infrastructure projects across geographies. With marine operations in 12 countries and a growing fleet of marine assets supporting ports, LNG terminals, national oil companies, refineries and offshore facilities, we bring deep operational expertise to complex maritime environments. “By combining these capabilities with strong local partnerships, we are helping create reliable maritime ecosystems that enable new energy trade corridors and strengthen long-term supply resilience.” This content is available after accepting the cookies. Argentina’s FLNG installation and hook-up in CoreMarine & Jumbo Offshore’s hands The APSEZ-Meridianconsortium will provide end-to-end marine services, including tugboat operations for LNG carriers, offshore logistics and supply support, and crew transfer services, supported by four high-specification tugboats, one anchor handling tug supply (AHTS) vessel, and one crew boat. The contract will be executed through Meridian Transportes Marítimos, the 51:49 joint venture between Adani Harbour International FZCO and Meridian Group. Southern Energy’s FLNG project is being developed by SESA, a joint venture between Golar LNG and Pan American Energy (PAE). Located in the San Matías Gulf in Argentina’s Río Negro province, the project will liquefy natural gas from the General San Martin pipeline aboard the FLNGHilli Episeyo, with commercial operations expected to begin in September 2027. This content is available after accepting the cookies. Germany’s SEFE nails down 8-year LNG offtake with South American firm The project is expected to produce 2.45 million tons of LNG annually in its first phase, equivalent to approximately 28 cargoes per year, making it Argentina’s first operational LNG export project, while the country is emerging as a major new LNG supplier. With agreements in place to support exports of up to 10 million tonnes annually to India from 2027, the Southern Energy FLNG project is expected to play an important role in connecting this growing supply base to global demand centers. SESA is dedicated to breathing life into Argentina’s first large-scale LNG export venture, comprising two floating LNG terminals with a combined capacity of about 6 mtpa. Aside from the first FLNG, Hilli Episeyo, there is also the second,MK II, which will add 3.5 mtpa from late 2028. Take the spotlight and anchor your brand in the heart of the offshore world! Join us for a bigger impact and amplify your presence at the core hub of the offshore energy community!

In scadenza a fine 2025, Interporto Rivers Venezia ha presentato nella seconda parte dell’anno scorso domanda per portare fino a fine 2029 la propria concessione sugli oltre 11mila mq di aree portuali retrostanti una banchina di quasi 470 metri, ubicato lungo la sponda di ponente del canale industriale Ovest di Marghera. Dopo l’intervento dell’Autorità di regolazione dei Trasporti e la messa a punto della documentazione, l’Autorità di sistema portuale di Venezia ha proceduto, al fine di eventuali controfferte, alla pubblicazione dei documenti presentati dalla società terminalistica appartenente a Orlean Invest Holding, che nei 256mila mq di proprietà alle spalle dell’area demaniale, su cui con 4 gru portuali semoventi da 80-100 tonnellate movimenta cereali, farine, cementi e prodotti siderurgici (sia alla rinfusa che in colli), offre servizi di stoccaggio e logistica di vario genere, grazie a circa 100mila mq di magazzini, 63mila metri cubi di silos e un raccordo ferroviario di 5 mila metri di lunghezza. I numeri del piano di impresa presentato all’Adsp, dall’organico agli investimenti ai previsti effetti di questi ultimi su fatturato, occupazione e volumi, sono stati tutti oscurati, ma si può leggere come “gli obiettivi strategici futuri di Interporto Rivers Venezia S.r.l. consistano nell’ulteriore ampliamento della varietà del mercato attuale, da un lato ottimizzando – ed eventualmente sostituendo in caso di maggiori marginalità operative – i contratti e i rapporti già in essere, dall’altro lato predisponendo nuovi centri di stoccaggio (sia ammodernando quanto già presente nel terminal sia acquisendo nuove aree) dedicati ad aree merceologiche ancor più redditizie”. Ampio anche il paragrafo sugli investimenti. Anche in questo caso, i dettagli non sono stati resi consultabili ma, limitandosi a un elenco descrittivo, da menzionare quantomeno “l’automatizzazione del traffico ferroviario”, “la realizzazione di una nuova piastra logistica nell’area ex Eckart, funzionale all’ampliamento delle operazioni connesse alla movimentazione del Project Cargo”, “l’acquisto e installazione gru Liebherr Lhm420”, nonché alcuni interventi di potenziamento della banchina, “con conseguente incremento diretto della capacità produttiva dell’area”. Da evidenziare infine come Interporto Rivers ritenga che “la positiva realizzazione dei summenzionati lavori di miglioramento dell’accessibilità nautica da parte di codesta Autorità di Sistema Portuale (i lavori di dragaggio del Canale Malamocco-Marghera, la cui procedura autorizzativa è ancora in corso, ndr) sia indispensabile per consentire a Interporto Rivers Venezia S.r.l. di sostenere il costo relativo al canone demaniale annuo, nonché sviluppare il proprio progetto imprenditoriale”. ISCRIVITI ALLA NEWSLETTER QUOTIDIANA GRATUITA DI SHIPPING ITALY SHIPPING ITALY E’ ANCHE SU WHATSAPP: BASTA CLICCARE QUI PER ISCRIVERSI AL CANALE ED ESSERE SEMPRE AGGIORNATI

Sempra Infrastructure, a subsidiary of North America’s energy infrastructure company Sempra, has revealed the name of its incoming Chief Executive Officer (CEO), who will be at the helm of the company upon completion of a KKR-led consortium’s acquisition of a majority ownership interest. Sempra Infrastructure has confirmed thatBhavesh Bob Patelhas been named the incoming CEO, who will assume this role and join the firm’s board of directors upon the closing of a KKR-led consortium’s previously announced acquisition of a majority ownership interest in the company. Patel highlighted:“Sempra Infrastructure is well positioned to help meet growing global demand for reliable energy resources and I have been impressed by what Justin and the team have built. “The company has established a leading energy infrastructure platform in North America, supported by a talented team and a culture grounded in safety and execution. I look forward to building on that momentum in the years ahead.” As a result,Justin Birdwill continue to serve as Chairman of the board of directors and Chief Executive Officer of the U.S. player through the close of the acquisition, after which he will continue to serve as Executive Vice President at Sempra, while also serving on Sempra Infrastructure’s board of directors. With nearly forty years of leadership experience across the global chemicals and energy sectors, Patel most recently served as President of Standard Industries and previously as Chief Executive Officer of LyondellBasell. Throughout his career, the incoming CEO has led large, complex and geographically diverse organizations across the Americas, Europe and Asia, with deep expertise in operational leadership and long-term value creation. Bird emphasized:“Bob is a highly accomplished and respected global executive with deep experience leading complex energy, chemicals and industrial businesses. “He brings a strong track record of building high-performing organizations, driving operational excellence and executing disciplined growth strategies, and we believe he is the right leader to guide Sempra Infrastructure in its next chapter of growth and build on the strong foundation the team has created.” The leadership transition comes as a KKR-led consortium prepares to acquire a majority ownership interest in Sempra Infrastructure to hold a 65% equity stake, while Sempra will retain a 25% interest alongside Abu Dhabi Investment Authority’s (ADIA) existing 10% stake. James Cunningham, Partner at KKR, underlined:“Over the past few years, we have developed a strong and strategic partnership with the Sempra Infrastructure team and have tremendous respect for the business they have built. “Bob’s experience leading large-scale global organizations makes him exceptionally well-suited to lead the company forward and help accelerate its long-term growth.” Meanwhile, Sempra Infrastructure is continuing to develop its portfolio, as illustrated by its joint venture with TotalEnergies, which recentlyachieved first LNG productionat the ECA LNG Phase 1 liquefaction project in Mexico. Take the spotlight and anchor your brand in the heart of the offshore world! Join us for a bigger impact and amplify your presence at the core hub of the offshore energy community!

BGN said it has awarded a contract to HD Hyundai Heavy Industries (HD HHI) for 2 dual-fuel very large gas carriers (VLGCs) to support its expansion in the global liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) shipping market. "The vessels, each with a cargo capacity of 93,000 cbm, will be built at HD HHI's shipyard in Korea and are scheduled for delivery by 2029", Geneva, Switzerland-based BGN said in a press release. "Designed to operate on both conventional and lower-emissions fuels, the new vessels are also capable of carrying ammonia, supporting BGN's commitment to the decarbonization of maritime transport", BGN said. On April 16 BGN awarded a contract to the same shipbuilder for 4 dual-fuel VLGCs. Each with a capacity of 90,000 cbm, the LPG carriers would also be delivered 2029. They are meant to run on both conventional and lower-emission fuels and carry ammonia. In another South Korean LPG partnership, BGN late last year launched a joint venture with South Korea's HMM. The 50-50 joint venture, based in Singapore, will operate 2 VLGCs under a 10-year contract with the option for 5 more years. The vessels are being built by HD HHI and are scheduled to be delivered in the first half of 2027, BGN said December 30, 2025. LPG Financing Recently BGN raised $450 million through syndicated bank financing to support its LPG trading and shipping operations. "The transaction represents a significant milestone for the company, featuring a uniquely structured financing package regarded as the first of its kind in the sector", BGN said in a media release April 21, 2026. "The facility is expected to deliver operational efficiencies and favorable financing terms for BGN and its suppliers. "The deal is backed by leading international commodity banks, underscoring strong lender confidence in BGN's growth strategy and trading strength". The lead banks were Coöperatieve Rabobank UA, Crédit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank and Natixis CIB. Coöperatieve Rabobank, along with CA Indosuez (Switzerland) SA, also acted as an issuing bank. The other participating banks were Raiffeisen Bank International AG, Société Générale, First Abu Dhabi Bank, Bank of China and Garantibank International NV. BGN chief financial officer Rui Florencio said, "Not only is the structure of this finance facility unique, but we closed it in a challenging geopolitical and high-price environment. This again demonstrates the level of trust and confidence our financial partners place in BGN’s business model and growth strategy". LNG Expansion Also in April BGN announced a joint venture with Capital Clean Energy Carriers Corp for the long-term charter and operation of BGN's first LNG carrier. The tanker will be chartered for an initial 10 years with the option to extend for 6 years. "Scheduled for delivery in early 2027, the Amore Mio I is a modern 174,000 cbm LNG carrier equipped with advanced technologies, including onboard reliquefaction systems and IMO Tier III-compliant emissions standards", BGN said April 16. To contact the author, email jov.onsat@rigzone.com What do you think? We’d love to hear from you, join the conversation on theRigzone Energy Network.TheRigzone Energy Networkis a new social experience created for you and all energy professionals to Speak Up about our industry, share knowledge, connect with peers and industry insiders and engage in a professional community that will empower your career in energy.

Houston-headquartered energy player Occidental (Oxy) has secured the go-ahead from Trinidad and Tobago to join U.S. energy giant ExxonMobil in an ultra-deepwater exploration block in the Caribbean’s southernmost archipelagic country. Following ExxonMobil’s re-entrance to Trinidad and Tobago in August 2025 througha production sharing contract (PSC)for theTTUD-1ultra-deepwater exploration block, the country’s government gave the green light for Oxy’s farm-in to the ultra-deepwater exploration block. According toKamla Persad-Bissessar, Trinidad and Tobago’s Prime Minister, the government’s approval enables Oxy to obtain a 10% interest in Block TTUD-1. As a result, ExxonMobil will retain the operator role and a 90% stake. This comes after Prime Minister along with Dr.Roodal Moonilal, Minister of Energy and Energy Industries, andErnesto Kesar, Minister in the Ministry of Energy and Energy Industries, met on May 22, 2026, withPaul Riley, President ExxonMobil Trinidad and Tobago Deepwater;Pedro Romero, Vice President of International Exploration Occidental Exploration (OXY); andGboyega Ayeni, Business Development Manager Exxon Mobil Trinidad and Tobago Deepwater. This content is available after accepting the cookies. Perenco ticks off field revitalization in Trinidad and platform installation offshore Congo Trinidad and Tobago’s Ministry of Energy and Energy Industries explained that the parties discussed ongoing projects and future near-term investment opportunities within the country. The ministry emphasized:“Occidental Petroleum is an international energy company that produces, markets and transports oil and natural gas. The company leverages its global leadership in carbon management to advance lower-carbon technologies and products. Headquartered in Houston, Occidental primarily operates in the United States, the Middle East and North Africa. “The courtesy visit by company representative Pedro Romero, Vice President of International Exploration OXY alongside ExxonMobil underscores Trinidad and Tobago’s capacity to attract the attention of leading international energy investors and reflects confidence in this country’s energy potential and long-term investment prospects.” This content is available after accepting the cookies. New oil discovery comes to light in Gulf of America Recently, Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago held a meeting to discuss cooperation in the management of potential cross-border hydrocarbon spills, alongside the reported oil spill at Riser Platform No. 2, Main Soldado field, Gulf of Paria, where they agreed to continue to exchange information as scientific work and technical investigations continue. The discussions underscored the shared commitment of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago to maintaining open communication and strengthening regional collaboration in addressing potential cross-border environmental incidents. Take the spotlight and anchor your brand in the heart of the offshore world! Join us for a bigger impact and amplify your presence at the core hub of the offshore energy community!

A new consortium, facilitated by the Global Maritime Forum and RMI, is set on bringing to life a green shipping corridor between the Port of Açu in Brazil and the Port of Antwerp-Bruges in Belgium to advance e-fuel production and transport. The consortium, which includes HIF Global, Fuella, NYK Line, Höegh Autoliners, and Wallenius Wilhelmsen, along with the port teams on both ends of the corridor, will assess infrastructure, vessels, and business models to create a roadmap for transportingzero-carbon fuelsproduced in Açu, such ase-ammonia or e-methanol. The transport is expected to be powered by the same zero- or near-zero-emission fuels. This new consortium builds on a pre-feasibility study developed by RMI and the Global Maritime Forum in November 2025. This content is available after accepting the cookies. E-fuels hold the key to shipping’s 2040 goals but not without push The study highlighted the competitive projected costs of e-fuel produced in Açu, due to Brazilian policies supportive of green hydrogen production, the country’s largely renewable electricity grid, its abundance of renewable energy sources, and a relatively low cost of capital. A 2024 report from the same two organisations, Oceans of Opportunity, identified the Port of Açu as a high-potential e-fuel export hub. The Global Maritime Forum and RMI intend to continue to facilitate the realisation of the Açu-Antwerpgreen corridor. This content is available after accepting the cookies. Methanol and ammonia shipping fuels are becoming a reality, new report shows To this end, work is already moving at a pace to progress beyond pre-feasibility and develop a feasibility analysis for the corridor. The feasibility analysis is expected to be published by the end of the year, with the consortium meeting regularly in the meantime. Eleanor Wells, Senior Project Manager at the Global Maritime Forum, commented:“We’re thrilled to be working with these partners to take these important steps towards Brazil’s e-fuel production and bunkering opportunity, whilst supporting the growing demand for e-fuels in Europe.” Take the spotlight and anchor your brand in the heart of the offshore world! Join us for a bigger impact and amplify your presence at the core hub of the offshore energy community!

Una nota di Ugl Mare e Porti ha reso nota la richiesta di una “convocazione urgente di un tavolo istituzionale per affrontare la delicata situazione occupazionale che riguarda i lavoratori dell’Impresa Fratelli Barretta, storica concessionaria del servizio di rimorchio nella rada e nel porto di Brindisi”. La richiesta, firmata dal Segretario Territoriale UGL Brindisi, Damiano Flores, è stata indirizzata al Presidente della Regione Puglia, al Prefetto di Brindisi, al Sindaco di Brindisi, alla Capitaneria di Porto e all’Autorità di Sistema Portuale del Mare Adriatico Meridionale. Il sindacato ha evidenziato “uno stato di forte preoccupazione tra i lavoratori, che vivono una fase di profonda incertezza legata alle recenti comunicazioni aziendali sull’ipotesi di una contrazione dell’organico. Una prospettiva che rischia di incidere pesantemente sulla stabilità economica di diverse famiglie e di aprire una stagione di tensione sociale in un comparto strategico per il porto di Brindisi. Alla base della situazione vi sarebbero le difficoltà connesse alla riduzione dei traffici industriali nello scalo, anche a seguito del blocco della Centrale Enel e della chiusura delle linee di cracking presso il molo petrolchimico, operativa dallo scorso marzo 2026”. Elementi che hanno inciso sul numero di toccate e, di conseguenza, sulle attività legate alla movimentazione mercantile, ma che secondo i rappresentanti dei lavoratori starebbero diventando il “paravento per operazioni di ben altra natura. Dietro la facciata della crisi economica transitoria, emerge lo spettro di una ristrutturazione aggressiva. I lavoratori evidenziano come la governance societaria intenda approfittare di questo momento di oggettiva flessione dei traffici industriali per imporre uno stravolgimento strutturale e permanente dell’organizzazione del lavoro portuale”. Il timore dei marittimi è che, “tagliando il personale e deregolamentando i turni di reperibilità e di servizio a bordo, l’azienda punti a massimizzare i profitti una volta che il porto avrà trovato nuovi equilibri commerciali, scaricando interamente il rischio d’impresa sulla pelle dei dipendenti. Ugl Mare e Porti sottolinea che il servizio di rimorchio non può essere considerato una semplice attività privata, ma rappresenta un presidio essenziale per la sicurezza della navigazione, per la regolarità delle manovre portuali e per la salvaguardia della vita umana in mare. Ogni eventuale riduzione dell’attuale assetto organizzativo deve quindi essere valutata con estrema attenzione, nel rispetto dei livelli occupazionali, delle condizioni normative e salariali dei lavoratori e delle esigenze di sicurezza dello scalo”. La convocazione di un tavolo presso la Regione Puglia rappresenta, secondo il sindacato, “la strada più opportuna per prevenire ulteriori tensioni e affrontare in modo responsabile una vertenza che si inserisce in un quadro territoriale già segnato dai processi di decarbonizzazione, transizione energetica e ridimensionamento di importanti attività industriali”. ISCRIVITI ALLA NEWSLETTER QUOTIDIANA GRATUITA DI SHIPPING ITALY SHIPPING ITALY E’ ANCHE SU WHATSAPP: BASTA CLICCARE QUI PER ISCRIVERSI AL CANALE ED ESSERE SEMPRE AGGIORNATI

La residential ship progettata da Espen Øino e commisisonata da una società monegasca sarà costruita da China Merchants Cruise Shipbuilding Ulyssia Residences ha confermato che il suo progetto di yacht residenziale di 323 metri, denominato Ulyssia, sarà costruito da China Merchants Cruise Shipbuilding e non da Meyer Werft, come inizialmente annunciato, segnando un passo significativo verso il suo viaggio inaugurale previsto per il 2031. Cmcs ha già consegnato diverse navi da crociera da spedizioni e ha realizzato la prima nave da crociera per spedizioni polari interamente costruita in Cina. Il cantiere collaborerà con la controllata Deltamarin per la progettazione, l’allestimento, i sistemi di bordo e il programma di costruzione complessivo dello yacht. Progettato da Espen Øino, Ulyssia è stato concepito come uno yacht residenziale unico nel suo genere, combinando le dimensioni di una nave passeggeri oceanica con la privacy e i comfort tipici di un superyacht. Il progetto comprenderà 122 residenze private e 22 suite per gli ospiti, oltre a una gamma completa di servizi di ospitalità, benessere ed esplorazione. Secondo il team di progetto, la collaborazione con Cmcs dovrebbe anche supportare l’ulteriore sviluppo delle tecnologie per batterie e energia solare, nell’ambito degli obiettivi di sostenibilità a lungo termine di Ulyssia. “Questo è senza dubbio uno dei momenti più importanti del percorso di Ulyssia fino ad oggi” ha affermato il fondatore e presidente Frank Binder. “Con Cmcs, abbiamo partner in grado di eguagliare la portata delle nostre ambizioni, aiutandoci al contempo a realizzare Ulyssia con la precisione, l’innovazione e la cura che un’imbarcazione di questo calibro merita.” Commentando l’ordine della nave, Øino ha dichiarato: “Ulyssia unisce le proporzioni e la complessità tecnica di una grande nave oceanica al carattere, alla privacy e alla raffinatezza di uno yacht. Vedere il progetto entrare nella fase di costruzione è un momento davvero significativo. Un cantiere innovativo come Cmcs offre la piattaforma tecnica, la capacità produttiva e l’ambizione necessarie per dare vita a un concept di queste dimensioni, preservando al contempo l’integrità del design e il livello di dettaglio che contraddistinguono Ulyssia”. Il team allargato del progetto rimane invariato e comprende lo studio di interior design milanese FM Architettura, il partner per il benessere Chenot, lo specialista di spedizioni Eyos Expeditions, il fornitore di aviazione privata VistaJet e il produttore di sommergibili Triton Submarines. Il progetto è stato presentato al Monaco Yacht Show 2025, dove Ulyssia Residences ha condiviso ulteriori dettagli sull’offerta residenziale, i servizi e il programma di crociere globali dell’imbarcazione. Tra i servizi previsti figurano uno yacht club e un porto turistico, un centro immersioni, una spa e un centro medico Chenot, diversi ristoranti e bar, campi sportivi, simulatori, un teatro, una biblioteca, uno studio d’arte, due elicotteri, tender di lusso e sommergibili Triton. Il progetto procede secondo i piani e il viaggio inaugurale è previsto in partenza dal Principato di Monaco nel 2031. ISCRIVITI ALLA NEWSLETTER QUOTIDIANA GRATUITA DI SHIPPING ITALY SHIPPING ITALY E’ ANCHE SU WHATSAPP: BASTA CLICCARE QUI PER ISCRIVERSI AL CANALE ED ESSERE SEMPRE AGGIORNATI

Paco Rodríguez Paco Rodríguez ElMundial de Fútbol 2026ya casi está aquí, y si eres seguidor del deporte rey probablemente quieras verlo con lamejor calidad de imagen posible, pero también con el mayor tamaño de pantalla que permita tu salón. Y para estos casos losproyectoresson una estupenda opción, ya que permiten diagonales gigantes que podemos tener de forma temporal solo unos días sin el engorro que muchas veces supone dejar una tele enorme instalada en el mueble o la pared. Así, si tienes unproyector de cine en casao estás pensando en comprarte o que te dejen uno, ya sea detamaño convencionalo de los nuevos modeloscompactos portátilespodrás disfrutar de los partidos del Mundial de Fútbol 2026 en pantalla gigante. Muy bien, pero ¿cómo hacerlo gratissi en general los proyectores no cuentan con sintonizador de TV y muchos tampoco con plataforma de streaming integrada? Si no quieres pagar una suscripción para poder ver los principales partidos, incluidos los de España, no te preocupes, porqueRTVEte trae la solución para disfrutarlo en abierto yademás en UHD. La cadena pública retransmitirá un partido diario durante todo el torneo totalmente gratis, incluidostodos los partidos de la Selección Española, el gran encuentro inaugural, los duelos más emocionantes de octavos y cuartos de final, las dos semifinales, el partido por el tercer y cuarto puesto y, como broche de oro, la gran final. Podrás verlos tanto a través de laTDT, comoen su servicio de streaming RTVE Playo directamente desde el decodificador de tu operadora (Movistar, Orange, Vodafone). Vale, pero ¿cómo llevo esta señal hasta mi proyector, qué tengo que conectar? Estudiemos varios casos: ¿Necesitaré un sistema de sonido externo?En general muchos de los proyectores portátiles vienen con altavoces integrados, aunque montan en habitualmente woofers muy pequeños que no sirven para cine, pero sí son suficientes para hacer alguna escucha temporal, como pueda ser ver un partido de fútbol donde no hay efectos especiales ni banda sonora apabullante. Pero si tu modelo no tiene sistema de sonido integradonecesitarás hacerte con uno externo, como unosaltavoces amplificadoso unabarra de sonido. Aquí lo normal es que si el decodificador de TDT o de operadora viene con salida de señal HDMI, la aproveches para llevar el vídeo y el audio hasta la entrada de una barra de sonido o receptor AV. Y luego conectes la salida de la barra o receptor al proyector. Finalmente hay que destacar que si has optado por un proyector portátil, aunque suelen estar pensados para uso también en exteriores, no son inmunes a las inclemencias de nuestros jardines. Y aquí nos convendrá averiguar si cuentan con una buena protecciónfrente a salpicaduras.No quiere decir que vayamos a dejarlo bajo la lluvia, pero si hay humedad o somos descuidados y empieza a chispear conviene que resista. Este receptor de la marcaRaypowofrece resolución Full HD. A diferencia de otros receptores, este modelo incorpora unpuerto USBque, además de reproductor,permite grabar. Incluye mando a distancia y es compatible con multitud de formatos. Puedes conseguirlo por20,50 euros. 2024 Nuevo Español TDT Decodificador TV DVB-T T2 H265 HEVC Otro de los receptores Full HD más económicos es estePicco T265. Su anterior precio era de 27,49 euros pero, ahora, lo puedes conseguir en oferta en Amazon, con casi3 euros de descuento, ya que está disponible por25,12 euros. Su memoria es capaz de almacenar hasta 6.000 canales de radio y televisión. Este modelo ofrece unanavegación de menú mejoraday también una experiencia de usuario mucho mejor. Incorpora salida HDMI para vídeo y audio y una pantalla LED frontal para ver la información del canal que está emitiendo. EDISION PICCO T265 Si quieres dar el salto a laresolución 4K, este receptor de la marcaMetronicte permitirá conseguirlo, ya que en sus especificaciones marca compatibilidad con señales de TDT 4K y viene con puerto USB para grabar y reproducir contenidos. Tiene un precio de49,69 euros. METRONIC 441701 Receptor decodificador TDT 4K Ultra HD UHD-S1 con Puerto USB Grabador, TIMESHIFT Otra alternativa algo más económica es este modelo deStrong, compatible con DVB-T2, el códec HEVC H.265, sonido Dolby Digital Plus, puerto de audio digital coaxial y entrada para memorias USB. También viene con Euroconector para teles muy antiguas (por este puerto no saca la señal 4K). Su precio es de40,69 euros. STRONG Decodificador TDT 4K UHD|DVB-T2|Pantalla|Compatible con HEVC265|Receptor/Sintonizador de TV|USB PVR|Dolby Digital Plus|HDMI|Euroconnector Si buscamos un modelo más avanzado, este deOctagontambién cuenta con receptor 4K HDR para la TDT siendo compatible con DVB-S2X y DVB-C/DVB-T2 (señal por satélite, cable y terrestre). Tiene funciones Smart TV, grabación, servidor multimedia, conexión WiFi y un precio más elevado que asciende hasta los139,90 euros. Octagon SF8008 - Receptor 4K UHD HDR Combo 1 x DVB-S2X y 1 x DVB-C/DVB-T2, señal por satélite, cable y terrestre, E2 Linux Smart TV Box, Media Server, función de grabación, HDMI EasyMouse, wifi dual Imagen portada |BenQ En Xataka Smart Home |RTVE confirma la fecha para iniciar las emisiones regulares en 4K UHD en la TDT. Esto es lo que hará falta para la máxima calidad Nota: algunos de los enlaces aquí publicados son de afiliados y pueden reportar un beneficio.

The title of Giuliano da Empoli’s 2022 novel,The Wizard of the Kremlin,knowingly evokes vividly Technicolored Hollywood fantasies: There’s no place like Motherland; please pay attention to the man behind the (Iron) curtain. An Italian Swiss think-tanker, essayist, and high-end political adviser, da Empoli isfascinatedby Machiavellian machinations. The book’s protagonist, Vadim Baranov, is a sorcerer skilled in the dark arts of propaganda and ideological brand management. The character is a thinly fictionalized version of Vladislav Surkov, widely regarded as the reigning trickster of twenty-first-century Russian politics, a “poet among wolves” with a direct line to the leader of the pack. Like his real-life model, Baranov is a lapsed artist with a knack for stagecraft. He’s a former avant-garde theater director turned reality-television producer who willingly sells out and takes over the stewardship of Vladimir Putin’s public image in the early 2000s, manning his post through the Kadyrov Pact and thedog daysof Russiagate in the United States to the inception of the Ukrainian war. The culture warrior-to-apparatchik pipeline makes for a fascinating and disconcerting professional case study. Resentful of what he perceives as the decadent and desultory sophistication of his fellow intellectuals—and attuned to an ambient yearning among the masses to Make Russia Great Again—Baranov styles himself as an amplifier for a strongman’s vox populi rhetoric. Putin has a penchant for appearing bare-chested in manly poses, and Baranov uses that charisma as a blunt instrument to renovate the country’s dilapidated power structure. Whereas the world-weary Boris Yeltsin required propping up in public appearances, Putin towers proudly before the cameras. Anavatarofvertikal vlasti,he stands at the peak of a top-down power structure predicated on the paranoid supplication of staffers and civilians alike. Baranov has no illusions about Putin’s hardwired authoritarian nature even as he works fast and furiously to conjure illusions for others. “There is nothing wiser,” he explains wryly, “than to bet on the madness of men.” On the page,The Wizard of the Kremlinexcels as a twisty, fact-based picaresque about high-rollers gambling with matters of life and death, and hung up on the breakneck exhilaration of letting it ride. Olivier Assayas’s film version ofThe Wizard of the Kremlinis impressively faithful to its source’s speed and sprawl, as well as to its Matryoshka-like narrative structure. In the adaptation, with a screenplay co-written by Assayas and French novelist Emmanuel Carrère, an American academic, Lawrence Rowland (Jeffrey Wright), visits the wily, worldly Baranov (Paul Dano). They are, ostensibly, to discuss the work of dissident Soviet satirist Yevgeny Zamyatin, whose 1924 dystopian novel,We—an acknowledged influence on George Orwell’s1984—is a point of mutual interest. Like a lot of like-minded literary types, they first connected online, but Baranov wants to do more than host a Russian-lit book club. He takes Lawrence’s visit to his snowy dacha as a cue to methodically recount the phases of his sentimental education. One of Assayas’s specialties is capturing the heady sensations endemic to coming-of-age, especially for those striving to livela vie bohème; his best movies, includingCold Water(1994) andSomething in the Air(2012), perch on the proverbial edge of 17. He’s thus in his sweet spot restaging Bara­nov’s salad days as a precocious, overgrown child of privilege. We get sweaty, shirtless punk-rock shows; salacious performance art interludes; rhetorical dick-measuring contests; bondage play and S&M theatrics; and, more centrally, decades-spanning situationship between Baranov and high-maintenance party-girl Ksenia (Alicia Vikander), whose luscious corruptibility—exemplified by her attraction to designer items and the men who subsidize their acquisition—has a symbolic dimension. Ksenia isn’t so much a character as an avatar of the hedonism unleashed by the thawing of the Cold War, and the film unfolds as an exploration of how these freedoms give way to ever-deeper and more insidious forms of repression. If Baranov is a wizard, he has also fallen under his own spell; his Rasputin-ish powers of persuasion extend to a form of self-hypnosis, whereby he grows steadily insensible to the consequences of his increasingly ruthless rhetoric. The writer Eduard Limonov once paid Surkov a backhanded compliment by saying he’d managed to turn Russia into a massive postmodern theatrical production, and the same could be said of Baranov. Glimpses of his earlier stage and television work hint at real talent and avant-garde nerve veiled by an increasingly expedient cynicism, and Assayas maps the process by which opportunism engulfs artistic expression. “Stop making up stories and start inventing reality,” instructsschemingoligarch Boris Berezovsky (Will Keen), who has recruited Baranov and his collaborators to Putin’s ranks. Berezovsky and his cronies are looking to consolidate their economic interests, and they’re betting on Putin as the man who can ram through their agenda (they’ll come to rue that decision). The group’s offer to Bara­nov entails things that any aspiring auteur would kill for: a big budget, access to the best equipment, and the means to reach a mass audience hungry for a mix of tradition and sensationalism. Baranov is just the man to cross those streams, as fluent in nineteenth-century literature as he is in MTV (Surkov onceclaimedto be fond of Tupac Shakur and Jackson Pollock), and he begins to do so readily, enabled by more relaxed attitudes toward Western tactics in the post-USSR era. He’s packaging his star client as a hybrid figure, a relic of the KGB with his eyes on a better future; “what interests me is power,” says Putin in the trailer, played by a dead-eyed, jaw-jutting Jude Law, coming through with a suitably cold and calculating performance—all coiled, tensile strength and unapologetic contempt, tinged here and there with judicious bits of ridiculousness (as when we see him jet-skiing and pumping iron like Arnold Schwarzenegger). Law’s ex–pretty boy status is slightly distracting; when Putin pouts that the Americans treat him like he’s the president of Finland, Law could be back inThe Talented Mr. Ripley,whining that Matt Damon won’t stop crowding him. His British accent, too, is notable: WhenThe Wizard of the Kremlinpremiered—a bit unprepossessingly, considering its pedigree—at last fall’s Venice and Toronto Film Festivals, critics made much of Assayas’s decision to have all of the major characters speak in English without put-on Russian inflections; the critic for the U.K.-based film magazineSight and Soundjeered at “the mild irony of having oligarchs speak in the jargon of Canary Wharf.” Yet given the underlying themes of globalization, it should be clear that such tactics are deliberate: “Making the film in English gave it something more universal,” Assayas told an interviewer about the film’s casting and dialogue. The use of the techniques from television to manipulate an entertainment-addicted public and puff up a strongman is hardly unique to Russia, after all. Like a lot of recent ruling-classsatires, fromSuccessiontoThe Apprentice, The Wizard of the Kremlinluxuriates in first-class textures—VIP sections and pri-vate yachts; inner-circle briefings and closed-door meetings—and Assayas does his best to communicate a wry skepticism toward his backdrops; Putin haunts his own boardrooms and offices like a Bond villain. Typically one of the most agile filmmakers around, Assayas only occasionally seems to lose his bearings while navigating the corridors of state power, largely because he’s covering a lot of ground. Even at 136 minutes, the film has to move quickly to accommodate the rollicking, globe-trotting plot. On the one hand, the speediness of the storytelling risks reducing significant events—like the possible false-flag bombings in Moscow used to shore up support for the Second Chechen War—to Wikipedia-thin plot points; on the other, it reinforces the idea of Baranov as an entertainer slinging tidy, crowd-pleasing narratives. He’s a master of playing both sides against the middle; he even stage-manages leather-clad radicals who play his own private pet dissenters. By the time he’s laying out his plan tousethe Sochi Olympic opening ceremonies as a time-traveling victory lap through Russian culture, he’s become an embodiment of the idea that history is not only written by the winners, but also redacted, dumbed-down, and punctuated with exclamation points. Baranov calls his proposed show the “apotheosis of kitsch”; his shamelessness is not a black mark but a badge of honor. The line might also be a skeleton key unlocking Assayas’s own strategy here: deluxe, slightly stilted geopolitical kitsch doubling as satirical commentary on its own existence. It’s surely intentional that Law’s Putin barely develops over the course of the story: His almost cryogenic quality of physical and behavioral stasis is a by-product of the same malignant narcissism that propels his policies. What’s trickier, and more important, to reconcile is the terrifically accomplished, increasingly enervating redundancy of Dano’s performance, which grows stiffer as Baranov ages into complacency. His hollowed-out delivery is a feat in and of itself; it either reflects Baranov’s descent into a downward spiral of well-spoken sophistry—“politics is the only game worth playing,” he drones, as if on sinister autopilot—or a filmmaker and his star drawing a blank and calling it portraiture. That cipherlike quality makes sense insofar as Baranov is a vaporous, abstract presence in a movie that strives for tactile, ripped-from-the-headlines authenticity: the Adman Who Isn’t There. In this way,The Wizard of the Kremlinworks as a less grabby and more rewarding study than a biopic like Ali Abbasi’sThe Apprentice(2024), which tried to earnestly psychologize Donald Trump’s Daddy issues and ended up playing—at least in stretches—like a po-facedSaturday Night Livesketch. Assayas doesn’t pretend to fully understand his antihero, much less to know better than him, and cultivates just enough bewildered distance in the process to give his film the sort of mystic-slash-metaphysical frisson promised by its title. He also alters the novel’s ending in a way that honors its exquisite bleakness while carving out a thin, jagged sliver of poetic justice. In the book, Baranov is resigned to a frosty exile, surveying the wreckage he helped to create (“there will still be something, but it won’t be humanity”). The movie provides a more decisive conclusion. The epilogue fuses ruthlessness and mercy, offering a sinister wizard a way out of his own private Oz; Assayas’s literal parting shot raises larger questions about crime, punishment, and who gets to play executioner. Adam Nayman is a critic and lecturer based in Toronto. He is the author of books on the Coen brothers, Paul Thomas Anderson, and David Fincher.

Norwegian energy data and intelligence provider TGS has taken steps to bring Apparition Geoservices and its proprietary simultaneous source acquisition and separation technology into its fold to advance seismic efficiency and subsurface imaging. While disclosing the acquisition of Apparition Geoservices, TGS explains that when combined with its Gemini enhanced frequency source (EFS) technology, Apparition creates a platform for step-change improvements in seismic operational efficiency, source capacity, and subsurface imaging clarity. As an advanced seismic acquisition and processing methodology that enables multiple sound sources to operate simultaneously in a controlled, coordinated manner, Apparition uses precise timing to encode sources distinctly, making overlapping signals easier to separate and cleaner to process, unlike traditional dithering approaches, increasing efficiency and source capacity while maintaining consistent, high-quality data. Carel Hoojikaas, Executive Vice President Marine Data Acquisition at TGS, commented:“The acquisition of Apparition strengthens our technology portfolio and enhances our ability to deliver measurable value to clients. Apparition is central to our multisource and deblending strategy and reflects the direction set out in TGS’ integrated technology roadmap. “By combining Apparition with our Gemini technology and Ramform fleet, we can increase efficiency, expand source capacity and improve data quality – helping clients reduce project timelines, manage costs and make more confident decisions.” TGS has tested Apparition across multiple acquisition configurations and marine environments over the past two years, working closely with the Apparition team and key clients to validate real-world performance, including a Hexa Source configuration that delivers unprecedented source efficiency as well as signal-to-noise uplift. According to the company, results demonstrate operational efficiency gains of up to 30%, alongside cleaner signal recovery, improved low-frequency performance, and enhanced visibility of deeper and more complex subsurface targets. By integrating Apparition into its acquisition and imaging workflows, the company can deliver scalable multi-source, multi-component seismic programs across ocean bottom node (OBN), towed streamer and Ultra-High Resolution 3D (UHR3D) surveys. This is expected to translate to improved survey economics for clients, reduced project timelines, and greater confidence in exploration and development decisions. As exploration becomes more complex, the integration of Apparition and Gemini is said to bring together advanced acquisition technology, imaging expertise, and global operational scale. The combined solution is designed to accelerate client decision-making and maximize the value of seismic programs. This acquisition comes shortly after TGSlanded an assignmentto perform a 4D streamer contract offshore Angola. Take the spotlight and anchor your brand in the heart of the offshore world! Join us for a bigger impact and amplify your presence at the core hub of the offshore energy community!

Until the early 1990s, many gasoline engine designs relied on carburetors to produce the fuel-air mixture needed to make the power that makes a car move. However, as the regulations around fuel efficiency and exhaust emissions became more stringent, carbureted engines had to be replaced by fuel-injected ones, with the 1994 Isuzu Pickupthe last carbureted vehicle sold new in America. With gasoline direct-injection systems yet to fully mature when the shift happened, automakers gravitated toward port fuel injection at first. In a port fuel-injection setup, injectors fire tiny droplets of fuel into the intake manifold before the inlet valve. The fuel vaporizes while sitting on the back of the warm intake valve and mixes with incoming air before entering the cylinder during the intake stroke, and being ignited by the spark plugs. The electronic control unit determines the amount of fuel delivered to the engine, based on factors such as engine speed, temperature, and the amount of pressure on the accelerator pedal. This precise manner of fuel delivery brings better fuel economy and engine performance than the carburetor system. We've witnessed increased use of direct-injection technology in modern engines, with around 73% of light-duty cars sold in 2023 having direct-injection engines, according to theU.S. Department of Energy. Which raises the question: Why is the shift happening? The short answer is that direct-injection engines provide higher precision in fuel delivery, helping to achieve better power, improved fuel economy, and lower carbon emissions. Isuzzu producted the first mainstream gasoline direct injection engines in the U.S. in 2004, and these power plants quickly became popular because of the benefits they offer over multi-point injection. While port fuel injection is efficient, its very nature means that fuel is lost along the intake tract, with some left on the intake port walls. Also, because port fuel-injection engines have lower compression ratios to prevent engine knock, they tend to have less performance and less efficiency than direct-injected engines. A key aspect of direct injection's appeal is that the injectors are positioned inside the cylinder and therefore shoot fuel at high pressure directly into the combustion chamber, bypassing the intake tract — so you can inject fuel quicker while having more precise control over the air-fuel mixture. This means you need less fuel for combustion, which ultimately translates into better fuel economy and lower emissions. In addition, direct injection creates a cooling effect in the combustion chamber, reducing the chance of knocking at higher speeds while enabling a higher compression ratio. When you combine this with technologies like variable valve timing and turbocharging, a small-displacement engine can make power like a much bigger naturally aspirated engine. This is what Ford has been able to achieve with its EcoBoost engines, as direct injection lets automakers downsize engines and comply with emissions standards without compromising power, as was the case during the malaise era,the worst period in car design. Despite its benefits, direct injection isn't perfect. One issue with direct injection is that it may struggle to achieve an optimal fuel-air mixture quality at low rpm, leading to decreased efficiency at lower engine speeds. This is because fuel is injected so late in the combustion process that there isn't enough time for it to mix completely with air from the intake. Another downside to a direct injection system is that since fuel is injected directly into the cylinder, it does not have a cleaning effect on the intake tract and back of the intake valves as with a port-injection setup. As a result, carbon, dirt, and other particles from the air intake and crankcase ventilation systemcan accumulate on intake valves and ports, hampering performance and efficiency. While processes such asfuel injection servicecan help de-carbonize an engine, automakers are using both port injection and direct injection in an effort to solve the problem by combiningthe benefits of both systems. Toyota got the ball rolling in 2005 when it introduced its D-4S dual injection system in the 2GR-FSE engine, which powered the Lexus GS and IS, as well as the Toyota Crown. Manufacturers like Ford, Volkswagen, and Hyundai have since adopted the technology, too.

Even on the first 30 seconds ofPrism Shores’s debut EP the Montreal quartet’s preternatural gift for great guitar jangle is apparent. It’s all there: Crisply arpeggiated chords played with hints of echo and distortion, plus a heaping helping of melancholy — catchy, comforting, a cozy jacket with its collar upturned on an overcast day.Thirty seconds does not a catalog make, of course, and Prism Shores have been gently pushing their sound outward ever since. Their debut full-length, 2022’sInside My Diving Bell, added a bit of post-punk heft by turning up the rhythm section, while last year’s excellentOut from Underneathfound the band building a sturdier wall of sound by bringing in additional voices, synths, and strings for texture, and some crunchy shoegaze swirl. 96 MB320**FLAC Their new album,Softest Attack, lands somewhere in between. Across its 12 tracks, Prism Shore strikes an ideal balance between sweet and serrated, scaling back the guitar effects (but not too much) and making space for melodies to shine without becoming saccharine. Opening track “Kid Gloves” is a bracing blast of power pop, followed by “Lying In Wait,” a strummy, mid-paced jangler about cold feet and false starts. When “I Didn’t Mean to Change My Mind” picks up steam, you can easily imagine its vigorous guitar downstrokes and openhearted tone fitting in quite comfortably on Teenage Fanclub’s 1995 pop-rock masterpiece,Grand Prix. Prism Shores draw a lot of comparisons to that legendary Scottish pop-rock group, andGrand Prixwas where the Fannies found the perfect blend of their alt-rock early days and the honeyed indie pop of their later years.Softest Attackfeels like a similar point for Prism Shores. “Gossamer” brings together (small) jet-engine guitars and a skyscraping chorus. “A Faster Gun” sounds like a sprawling shoegaze band trying to rein it in and make a radio hit. The speedy, spirited “Idle Again” is the closest the band gets to jangle punk, and “Guidebook” clearly traces its drone pop DNA back to the Flying Nun scene of 1980s New Zealand—Prism Shores guitarist Finn Dalbeth’s home country, it should be noted. Recurring lyrical themes onSoftest Attackinclude uncertainty and unease, insecurity and impatience, seeking direction and searching for one’s place in the world. In the album’s propulsive penultimate track, “Resigned to the Fact,” Jack MacKenzie sings: “If my turn will never come then just say so/ Because I can’t help but feel I’m wasting my breath/ What a fool’s errand this whole charade/ Is turning out to be.” Who knows if or when the band’s turn will come—or if perhaps it’s happening right now—and that’s for them to figure out anyway. One thing is certain: On a well-trodden path crowded with good jangle-pop-rock bands, Prism Shores stands out. They should stay the course. —daily.bandcamp.com «Grateful Dead – Dave’s Picks Volume 58 (2026)Dea Matrona – Hate That I Care (2026)» Your email address will not be published.Required fields are marked* Comment* Name* Email* Website Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Δ This site uses Akismet to reduce spam.Learn how your comment data is processed. 1. Links and requests and thanks only. No chat. Keep all requests and thanks brief! 3. Requests should have correct title, artist and release date; also a Discogs, Allmusic or Amazon link is helpful.

TMC, a Norway-based designer of compressed air systems for marine and offshore use, has received an order to provide a marine compressed air system for two subsea rock installation vessels being built for the Netherlands-headquartered marine contractor Van Oord. Yantai CIMC Raffles Offshore has hired TMC Compressors to deliver a complete marine compressed air system, including instrument air compressors and air dryers, to each of Van Oord’s two subsea rock installation vessels, which arecurrently under construction. The value of the contract has not been disclosed. Hans-Petter Tanum, TMC’s Director of Sales and Business Development, commented:“It is always fun and interesting to equip innovative and unique vessels such as these two. They can play an important role in facilitating the energy transition through enabling, amongst other things, offshore wind projects.” With a substantial loading capacity of 35,000 tonnes, these vessels will be capable of handling large rock sizes and feature a DP-2 dynamic positioning system, enabling ships to maintain precise positioning despite challenging conditions, such as waves, wind, and currents. These features are expected to make the vessels ideal for long-distance projects, as they will minimize round trips, reducing emissions and costs per installed rock volume. Van Oord operates a fleet of 61 vessels, including three subsea rock installation vessels. This content is available after accepting the cookies. Van Oord’s new subsea rock installation vessels bear Ulstein design The sustainable design of the new ships entails multi-fuel engines, such as biofuel and methanol, a DC grid with large battery storage capacity, and an energy-efficient hull design and rock-handling system. Subsea rock installation is considered vital for protecting and stabilizing offshore energy assets. “Our marine compressed air systems are highly reliable and designed so that the vessel crew can maintain the compressors themselves, also while at sea. We believe this is the ideal solution for a vessel that is designed to manage long-distance projects,” highlightedHans-Petter Tanum. This deal comes months after TMCsecured a contractwith COSCO Shipping Heavy Industry to deliver a complete marine compressed air system to SBM Offshore’sFSO Chalchi, which will be deployed at Woodside’sTriondeepwater oil field offshore Mexico. Take the spotlight and anchor your brand in the heart of the offshore world! Join us for a bigger impact and amplify your presence at the core hub of the offshore energy community!

Virus del Covid e non solo, batteri, Pfas, metalli e inquinanti, geni di resistenza agli antibiotici e microplastiche, microplastiche dappertutto. Con oltre 4000 campioni di acqua in 140 diversi punti di mari e oceani tra il nostro Mediterraneo, Atlantico, Pacifico, Artico, Oceano Indiano, il progetto Sea care – portato avanti dall’Istituto superiore di Sanità con la collaborazione della Marina Militare, è il primo e più grande progetto internazionale di indagine delle acque. Dodici missioni, oltre 4000 prelievi Numeri importanti: tra il 2022 e il 2025 sono state effettuate 12 missioni su 6 unità navali, tra le quali il gioiello della nostra Marina, l’Amerigo Vespucci. Con prelievi di acqua in superficie e in profondità per effettuare indagini virologiche, chimiche e microbiologiche. E una conclusione: il mare è un “archivio” delle nostre emissioni e i nostri scarichi vengono trasportati dappertutto. Ne sono prova i Pfos, soggetti a restrizioni d’uso a livello internazionale da diversi anni e trovati in quantità significative anche in mare aperto e nell’Artico, segno della loro eccezionale persistenza e mobilità. Primo Forum sugli oceani Un progetto che aveva l’obiettivo di verificare la qualità delle acque e il livello di inquinamento del nostro pianeta e i cui risultati sono stati presentati oggi nella sede dell’Iss a Roma in occasione del primo Forum internazionale sugli oceani, con esperti di tutto il mondo. Una mappa sconfortante, perché non c’è luogo remoto del pianeta che sia indenne, dove i ricercatori siano riusciti a trovare acque incontaminate. In tutti i mari studiati (Mediterraneo, Atlantico, Artico, Golfo Persico, Mar Rosso) sono stati trovati geni di resistenza agli antibiotici, con livelli più alti vicini alle zone costiere più abitate ma anche lungo le rotte di navigazione. La salute delle acque è anche la nostra “Proteggere la salute umana significa oggi, inevitabilmente, prendersi cura del mare e degli oceani – afferma Andrea Piccioli, ideatore di Sea Care e direttore generale dell’Istituto Superiore di Sanità – quello che immettiamo nell’ambiente non scompare: l’oceano lo restituisce all’uomo, trasformando i fenomeni di inquinamento locale in una sfida globale per la sanità pubblica. I dati del progetto parlano chiaro: in tutti i bacini analizzati sono stati rilevati geni di resistenza agli antibiotici, Pfas, microplastiche e tracce di Sars-Cov-2 persino nell’Artico. Queste sostanze sono presenti ovunque, dalle aree costiere fino alle acque aperte, comprese zone remote dove mai si sarebbe immaginata la loro diffusione. Non esistono confini: l'impatto dell'uomo si propaga all'interno di un sistema globale straordinariamente complesso e interconnesso e questo fa sì che l'inquinamento e i fattori di rischio ci ritornino indietro attraverso l'acqua, il cibo e il clima stesso”. Il ruolo della Marina militare Il progetto Sea Care ha avuto la piena collaborazione della Marina che in questi anni ha ospitato a bordo ricercatrici dell’Iss in missioni anche lunghe, fino a 60-80 giorni. “Una esperienza straordinaria, non solo per l’atmosfera che si crea a bordo, ma per i rapporti umani, la collaborazione, e i luoghi che difficilmente sono accessibili in altro modo”, racconta, con un pizzico di nostalgia, Lorenza Notargiacomo, 28 anni e dottoranda presso il Centro nazionale sicurezza delle acque dell’Iss e università di Roma La Sapienza. “Che cosa mi ha colpito di più? Trovare Pfas anche attorno alle Svalbard e aver navigato nell’Indopacifico in un mare di macroplastiche, tra bottiglie, sacchetti, pezzi di plastica grandi: distese di plastica. Mi ha sconvolto, come vedere solo plastica in banchina tra una nave e l’altra”. L’antibiotico-resistenza L’altra grande criticità è l’antibiotico resistenza, nei confronti della quale ci dimostriamo sempre più indifesi: ormai una vera emergenza mondiale. “Abbiamo fatto prelievi in 43 siti – racconta Anna Muratore, 33 anni, ricercatrice al Centro nazionale sicurezza delle acque dell’Iss – tra le Svalbard e il Mediterraneo, dall’Italia a Gibilterra, poi l’Oceano Atlantico da Cadice agli Stati Uniti e ancora Golfo Persico e Mar Rosso cercando 5 geni di antibioticoresistenza: uno dei geni sentinella era ubiquitario e in 5 dei 43 siti li abbiamo trovati tutti e 5”. Missioni al femminile I turni di lavoro scientifico sulle navi sono sempre di due persone, quasi sempre donne perché il gruppo dell’Iss è interamente femminile. La collaborazione con la Marina non si limita al passaggio a bordo. “Il personale della Marina ci aiuta nei prelievi – racconta Muratore – perché alcuni sono difficili, soprattutto nell’Oceano, e serve anche forza di braccia. Nei giorni di attività scientifica per tutta la giornata preleviamo campioni – per l’analisi virologica per esempio servono 500 litri di acqua - che poi vengono pre-trattati a bordo e congelati: per le analisi servono le apparecchiature che abbiamo in Istituto e che sono di grandi dimensioni”. Il momento più bello della missione? “Il cinema serale sulla Vespucci, con un grande telo tirato per lo schermo, e la pizza a mezzanotte. Il cuoco della Vespucci è un genio dei lievitati: il pane fresco ogni giorno ancora ce lo ricordiamo”, ridono le due ricercatrici. Le azioni proposte da Sea Care E veniamo alle conclusioni di Sea Care. Il progetto propone dieci azioni per la salvaguardia degli ambienti marini e per la salute dell’uomo stesso: innanzi tutto che la ricerca sugli oceani diventi una priorità di salute pubblica perché significa costruire prevenzione e proteggere le comunità dai rischi sanitari emergenti. Poi l’adozione di metodologie di ricerca condivise e omogenee a livello internazionale per rendere comparabili ed interoperabili i singoli studi e avere una conoscenza globale e approfondita. Adottare l’approccio "From Source to Sea" (Dalla sorgente al mare): ogni forma di inquinamento prodotta nell'entroterra finisce per impattare direttamente e talvolta amplificandosi sulla nostra salute tramite il cibo, l'acqua e l'aria. La protezione dell'uomo richiede quindi una visione integrata dell'intero ciclo idrico. Includere la salute nel Trattato sugli Alti Mari: la tutela della salute e del benessere umano dovrebbe essere parte del nuovo Accordo BBNJ (Biodiversità oltre la giurisdizione nazionale), per sviluppare strategie di prevenzione che tutelino contemporaneamente ecosistemi marini e comunità globali. Costruire una squadra unica per un obiettivo comune, superando i muri tra le competenze: grandi istituzioni come Oms, Unesco-Ioc e Unione Europea devono coordinarsi in un sistema unico, affinché scienza e sanità pubblica progrediscano insieme. Infine dati sistematici per la Water Agenda ONU: studi ed osservazioni limitati nel tempo e nello spazio vanno integrati in infrastrutture di produzione e analisi dati continui e comparabili, funzionali a far convergere tutela della salute e protezione del mare al centro degli obiettivi globali delle Nazioni Unite.