To understand how America is preparing for its nuclear future, follow Melissa Durkee’s fifth-grade students as they shuffle into Room 38 at Preston Veterans’ Memorial School in Preston, Conn. One by one, the children settle in for a six-week course taught by an atypical educator, the defense contractor General Dynamics.
“Does anyone know why we’re here?” a company representative asks. Adalie, 10, shoots her hand into the air. “Um, because you’re building submarines and you, like, need people, and you’re teaching us about it in case we’re interested in working there when we get older,” she ventures.
Adalie is correct. The U.S. Navy has put in an order for General Dynamics to produce 12 nuclear ballistic missile submarines by 2042 — a job that’s projected to cost $130 billion. The industry is struggling to find the tens of thousands of new workers it needs. For the past 18 months, the company has traveled to elementary schools across New England to educate children in the basics of submarine manufacturing and perhaps inspire a student or two to consider one day joining its shipyards.
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Though the new Columbia-class subs are primarily being built in Rhode Island, Connecticut and Virginia, the Navy is going to tremendous lengths to recruit talent across the country. Over the past year, a blitz of ads has appeared at various sports events — including major league baseball games, WNBA games and even atop a NASCAR hood — steering fans to buildsubmarines.com. The website connects job seekers with hiring defense contractors as part of a nearly $1 billion campaign. Some of that money will go toward helping restore the network of companies that can supply the more than three million parts that go into a Columbia sub. Like so much of the nation’s nuclear infrastructure, those supplier numbers have plummeted since the 1990s.
Territorial wrangling over who owns the South China Sea has strangled local marine life, say scientists, urging China and the Philippines to set aside political differences and work to save the fish, coral and plants that live border-free.
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Since 2013, China has built artificial islands that cover more than 3,000 acres of the Spratlys, according to U.S.-based policy organisation Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative.
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A study last December by the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative also blamed China’s dredging and clam harvesting for destroying almost 20,000 acres of reefs in the South China Sea.
According to the CIA’s World Factbook, Vietnam occupies around 50 outposts, The Philippines occupies nine, Malaysia occupies five, and China occupies sevenin the disputed Spratly Islands.
While Manila mulls over filing a case against China with so-called “solid evidence of the damaged coral reefs caused by Chinese actions,” China, on Monday, released a report based on an unprecedentedly extensive and detailed on-site ecosystem survey around Ren’ai Jiao (also known as Ren’ai Reef), with solid evidence showing that the grounded warship has caused damage to the coral reefs and environmental pollution in the South China Sea.
China has in turn dredged sand and coral to build artificial islands in the South China Sea, which it says is normal construction activity on its territory, but which other nations say is aimed at enforcing its claim to the waterway.
A report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies last year found China’s construction activity buried more than 4,600 acres (1,861 acres) of reef.
China claims almost all of the vital waterway, where $3 trillion worth of trade passes annually, including parts claimed by the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam.
Greg Poling, from the front CSIS, claims that Vietnam is also building artificial islands.
While reiterating that the arbitral tribunal in the South China Sea arbitration exceeded its jurisdiction and made an illegitimate ruling, Chinese experts warned on Monday that the Philippines is scheming for “new arbitration” on the issue, which would undermine regional peace and stability.
Ray Powell, director of the SeaLight Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation at Stanford University, said China is using an “asymmetrical” strategy through military might in asserting its claims in the region.
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He also expressed support for the Philippine government’s plan to file another case against China, this time over the environmental destruction that China has caused in the West Philippine Sea.
President Bongbong Marcos shocked the nation when he put out a tweet (X post) this weekend on the recent water cannoning incidents at Ayungin and Scarborough Shoal. I would like to highlight this part of his statement: “Let me reiterate what is settled and widely recognized: Ayungin Shoal is within our Exclusive Economic Zone, any foreign claim of sovereignty over it is baseless and absolutely contrary to international law…No one but the Philippines has a legitimate right or legal basis to operate anywhere in the West Philippine Sea.”
Caracas, December 4, 2023 (venezuelanalysis.com) – Venezuelans voted to support the country’s sovereignty claim over the Essequibo Strip in a non-binding referendum on Sunday.
An air of bonanza has raised the projections of the Exxon Mobil corporation, which accumulated around 414 billion dollars in 2022, an unprecedented income in its history, which represents 44.8% more than the previous year. It is a gigantic increase if compared to its crisis in 2020, when its losses put its place in the stock market in jeopardy. Also from the research of that American corporation, it is said that Guyana could become “the country that produces the most barrels of oil per inhabitant in the world, surpassing Kuwait, in that case, when measuring the wealth per capita of its 800 thousand inhabitants, it would become a rich country, since in 2021 its GDP increased by 57.8% and in 2022 by 37.2%”.
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 
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