Daily Telegraph – China defends ambition to build aircraft carriers
China has no plans to use aircraft carriers to achieve global power and challenge the United States’ dominance, a senior general has said in a pointed defence of its rapid military expansion.
Washington Post – Team ‘Chimerica’
Niall Ferguson on how China+America=Chimerica.
Daily Telegraph – Iran opens new naval base in Gulf
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have opened a fourth naval base along Iran’s Gulf coast in the port of Assalouyeh. It will control a 190-mile stretch of coastline west of the strait between Kish Island and the port of Dayyer.
BBC – Australia navy off for Christmas
Most of Australia’s navy is to be given two months off over Christmas as part of a new strategy to cope with crew shortages, the defence minister says.
Wall Street Journal – Pirates Exploit Confusion About International Law
A nice explanation of why it is so difficult to prosecute pirates after they are captured.
The Times – Iranian grain ship seized as Somali pirates hold world to ransom
BBC – Pirates capture Saudi oil tanker
Somali pirates have seized a giant Saudi-owned oil tanker in the Indian Ocean and are steering it towards Somalia, the US Navy reports. This act of piracy is unique for the size of the ship involved and the distance it was seized off-shore – 450 miles.
UPI – Russian ship thwarts pirate attack
A Russian frigate prevented the seizure of a vessel flying the Saudi flag from being taken over by pirates off Somalia’s coast Sunday.
Wired – Mystery Chinese Hospital Ship: What’s It For?
Late last month, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) accepted its first purpose-built floating hospital, the 10,000-ton “Ship 866.” While seemingly innocuous on the surface, ships like this are windows into an evolving military strategy for an emerging world power.
World Politics Review – New Chinese Naval Ships a Window into Evolving Strategy
Time – The Navy’s Floating Fiasco
A look at the sorry state of the USS San Antonio
Press Trust of India – Gorshkov’s Delivery to Indian Navy Delayed Until 2012
Russia today said the delivery of Admiral Gorshkov aircraft carrier to the Indian Navy would be delayed till 2012 as the vessel could be refitted only sometime in 2010.
Foreign Affairs – The Politics of Hunger: How Illusion and Greed Fan the Food Crisis
Politicians have it in their power to solve the food crisis, but they must be willing to end the biases against big commercial farms and genetically modified crops and do away with farm subsidies.
AFP – Sailor charged with submarine deaths
A sailor has been charged for setting off the fire extinguishing system on the Russian nuclear submarine Nerpa, causing 20 people to be gassed to death
Reuters – Russia’s ageing navy still packs a deadly punch
Aboard the missile cruiser Moskva…
Los Angeles Times – Ruling unlikely to quell sonar storm
Despite the Supreme Court’s ruling Wednesday that the nation’s security outweighs the need to protect marine mammals from high-powered sonar during Navy training exercises, environmentalists said the fight was far from over.
New York Times – Supreme Court Rules for Navy in Sonar Case
Daily Telegraph – US Navy seeks to zap pirates
Naval commanders in the Gulf have requested ray gun technology to disable pirates without triggering gunfights that could endanger hostages.
Wired – Supreme Court: National Security Trumps Whales, Environmental Law
It’s a loud, sad day off the coast of California: the US Supreme Court today ruled in favor of the Navy and against environmentalists who argued that military sonar frequencies kill whales.
BBC – Navy shoots dead pirate suspects
The Royal Navy has repelled a pirate attack on a Danish cargo ship off the coast of Yemen, shooting dead two men believed to be Somali pirates.
Daily Telegraph – Submarine in worst nuclear leak since 80s
The most serious leak of radioactive liquid for 23 years at a Royal Navy base is under investigation after gallons of contaminated water spilled into a river from a nuclear submarine.
Associated Press – Russian sub survivors: Freon killed as crew slept
Dozens of crewmen were fast asleep on a nuclear submarine when freezing Freon gas poured over them from a firefighting system, survivors said Tuesday in the first eyewitness accounts of the Russian submarine accident that killed 20 people.
Washington Post – Russians To Probe Submarine Accident
Prosecutors opened a negligence probe Sunday into an accident aboard a new, nuclear-powered Russian submarine that killed 20 people, saying the victims appeared to have suffocated after a fire-safety system flooded two sections of the vessel with a gas that displaces oxygen.
Vanity Fair – Wall Street Lays Another Egg
Not so long ago, the dollar stood for a sum of gold, and bankers knew the people they lent to. Historian Niall Ferguson charts the emergence of an abstract, even absurd world—call it Planet Finance—where mathematical models ignored both history and human nature, and value had no meaning.
BBC – Twenty die on Russian submarine
At least 20 people have died in an incident involving the failure of a fire extinguishing system on a Russian nuclear submarine
Vanity Fair – Empire Falls
Historian Niall Ferguson writes that they called it “the American Century,” but the past hundred years actually saw a shift away from Western dominance. Through the long lens of Edward Gibbon’s history, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Rome 331 and America and Europe 2006 appear to have more than a few problems in common.
Mass High Tech – Naval Undersea Warfare Center replicated in Second Life
The Naval Undersea Warfare Center has created a virtual model of itself in Second Life — an online campus that is intended to be a 128-acre virtual R&D facility in a virtual Newport, R.I.
Defense Technology International – Moscow Eyes Strategic Port of Benghazi as Second Med Naval Station
Colonel Mummar el-Qaddafi, Libya’s longtime controversial leader, visited Moscow over the weekend and apparently offered the Port of Benghazi to Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev during their talks in the Kremlin last Saturday.
NOSI - Naval Open Source Intelligence™ 
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