Statement from the Maritime Administrator on the 75th Anniversary of the United States Merchant Marine Academy

My Fellow Kings Pointers:

It is a great honor for me to extend my personal congratulations to all Kings Pointers and Friends of the Academy on the occasion of the 75th Anniversary of the dedication of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy on September 30, 1943.

Our Academy was born at a tumultuous time in world history, and "We'll Deliver!" was more than lyrics in a song – it was reality. While we scrambled to gain our sea legs as an institution, one hundred and forty-two Cadets gave their last full measure in service to our country, and many others were killed after graduating while serving as ship's officers. Some 6,000 officers graduated during the war – almost all of them tested under fire. Our "Deeds not Words" motto was born from their example of courage and selfless sense of duty.

Our Midshipmen have been integral to every armed conflict since those early days of World War II, ensuring our armed forces were swiftly transported and reliably sustained far from our shores. Commercial maritime shipping energized our development as a nation, and today, U.S.-flagged vessels crewed by Kings Point-trained and educated merchant mariners keep a stake in our waterborne supply chains.

Over the years, we've built a world-class reputation for producing the finest mariners and leaders who have served in peace and war in every theater and in every ocean. Our distinctive approach to sea-going education continues to be a hallmark of our success. That tradition is ours to carry forth today in all that we do. In many ways, the economic and national security challenges that we face today are as daunting as those dark days of 1943; and our graduates have never been in greater demand.

The past seven and a half decades have witnessed our school evolve to meet the needs of our industry, and the introduction of 21st century technologies. As we enter our 76th year of service to our Nation, more change is on the horizon as we strive to remain relevant to our Nation and the maritime industry. Constant through it all remains our core values of Respect, Honor and Service – lived every day by every member of the Kings Point family. We ARE Kings Point!

Happy Anniversary Mariners!

Yours aye,
Mark H. Buzby '79
Maritime Administrator

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A Reminder - 2018 National Teen Driver Safety Week campaign materials now available

National Teen Driver Safety Week October 21-27, 2018 This week and every week, parents should have conversations with their teens about the important rules they need to follow to stay safe behind the wheel of a passenger car, truck, or SUV. These rules address the greatest dangers for teen drivers: alcohol, inconsistent or no seat belt use, distracted and drowsy driving, speeding, and number of passengers. The Problem: Too many teens are dying on our roads Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for teens (15-18 years old) in the United States - ahead of all other types of injury, disease, or violence. In 2016, there were 2,288 people killed in crashes involving a teen driver (15-18 years old), of which 814 deaths were the teen driver - a 6% increase from 2015. Parents can be the biggest influences on teens' choices behind the wheel if they take the time to talk with their teens about some of the biggest driving risks. Even if you think they don't hear you, they do. Remember, set the rules before they hit the road.  Click here and get your campaign materials now!

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Attacks in eastern DR Congo drive new displacement amid Ebola threat

The Refugee Brief, 28 September

By Kristy Siegfried @klsiegfried   | 28 September, 2018 WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW Attacks in eastern DR Congo drive new displacement amid Ebola threat. UNHCR reports that violence by armed groups is on the rise in the Beni area of North Kivu Province and further north in Ituri Province, driving new displacement in an area that already has the highest number of internally displaced people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The worsening insecurity also threatens efforts to contain an Ebola outbreak in the region. Last weekend, fighting reached Beni city itself for the first time, killing more than 20 people and forcing some aid groups to put their activities on hold while the city marks a period of mourning. Meanwhile, a series of new attacks in Djugu Territory in Ituri has destabilized an area that was recovering from large-scale violence and displacement in the first half of this year. UNHCR reports that the numbers of people fleeing across Lake Albert to Uganda has remained fairly stable, with arrivals averaging about 200 people a day. The agency is working with the World Health Organization to screen refugees arriving in Uganda for symptoms of the Ebola virus. So far, no cases have been reported. New UN panel to prepare indictments over Rohingya atrocities. The UN Human Rights Council yesterday voted in favour of a resolution to set up a panel to prepare evidence of human rights abuses committed in Myanmar for any future prosecution. Thirty-five of the council’s 47 members voted in favour of the resolution, which was brought by the EU and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation following a UN fact-finding report earlier this month. The new panel is to work closely with any future prosecution brought by the International Criminal Court. WHAT’S ON OUR RADAR Sharp rise in Iranians seeking asylum in Serbia. In an effort to boost tourism, last year Serbia became the first country in mainland Europe to offer visa-free travel to Iranians. The Guardian reports that increasing numbers of Iranians are flying into Belgrade but not taking their return flights home. While some are attempting to move on towards the EU via Bosnia and Herzegovina, more than 1,500 have expressed a desire to seek asylum in Serbia. In its September update from Serbia, UNHCR noted that among newly arrived asylum-seekers and migrants, Iranians were the third largest nationality, after Afghans and Pakistanis. A way forward for the US asylum system. A new report from the Migration Policy Institute, co-authored by two former immigration officials, recommends a number of actions to address what they describe as a crisis in the US asylum system that has led to a major backlog of cases. The authors lay out a set of initial steps the administration could take to begin to repair the system without narrowing access to humanitarian protection. They include allowing asylum officers at the southern border to adjudicate cases rather than referring them to backlogged immigration courts and strengthening cooperation with neighbouring countries to better manage humanitarian flows through the region. Greece’s Evros region unprepared for a new influx of asylum-seekers. IRIN reports from northern Greece, where a surge in the number of asylum-seekers crossing the Turkish border via the Evros River took authorities by surprise in March and April. Six months later, arrivals have slowed, but worries persist that the region’s refugee reception system is still poorly prepared for any new influx. New arrivals are brought to “pre-removal centres” run by the Hellenic police until they can be transferred to the area’s only official Reception and Identification Centre in Fylakio. NGO staff working at the centre told IRIN the facility remained under-staffed and lacked translators. UNHCR and others have called on the Greek government to improve conditions and expand reception capacity in the region. Palestinian refugee agency gets $118 million in new funding. Germany, the European Union, Kuwait, Ireland and Norway all promised to contribute funding to UNRWA to help it fill a shortfall left by a cut in US funding. The pledges were made on Thursday at a meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York. UNRWA chief Pierre Krähenbühl said the new funds were “a significant step in the direction of overcoming UNRWA’s greatest and gravest financial crisis ever”, adding that the shortfall in the annual budget now stood at $68 million. Jordan's Foreign Minister, Ayman Safadi, who co-hosted the meeting, said discussions were under way on ensuring long-term financing for the agency. GET INSPIRED South Sudanese refugee and women’s rights activist Mercy Akuot talks about why education for girls is so key to defeating forced and early marriage and other abuses against women and girls like those she herself experienced. At an event in New York yesterday attended by leaders and policy makers, refugees spoke about the pressing need to make education a priority in refugee responses. DID YOU KNOW? Today, over four million refugee children are out of school. This is an increase of half a million children from 2016.

Follow UNHCR DONATE Produced by the Communications and Public Information Service.  Managing Editors: Melissa Fleming, Christopher Reardon and Sybella Wilkes Contributing Editor: Kate Bond Subscribe to The Refugee Brief or view recent issues HQP100 P.O. Box 2500 CH-1211 Geneva 2 Tel +41 22 739 85 02   |   Fax: +41 22 739 73 14 Views expressed in reports highlighted in this newsletter do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR. Unsubscribe   |   Update Profile   |   Privacy Policy   |   View this email in your browser

Monkeys forced to endure excruciating pain

These primates are in agony. Will you help them?

	View this message online.  |   Donate Now
	Dear Aaaaaaa, How do you get away with murder? You do it in a laboratory and call it "science." Every year, more than 100,000 primates are imprisoned in laboratories, and most of them are tormented and killed in horrific, invasive experiments. The abuse begins early—babies are often torn away from their mothers within three days of birth and confined to barren steel cages in which they live out the rest of their lives in misery and excruciating pain. Many primates die in agony as a result of the experiments, and those who survive them are usually killed and dissected. We're doing all that we can to end this cruelty, but we won't succeed without you. Donate $5 or more to our Animals Out (of the Labs) Matching-Gift Challenge today and your gift will be matched, DOUBLING your contribution to help stop animal tests. To thank you for your generosity, we'll send you a sticker that you can use to show your opposition to cruel tests on animals. Please, don't let animals' suffering go unnoticed. Those in laboratories are living in near-constant pain, fear, and neglect—and they need your help today. They need you to give today so that no other monkeys' eyeballs are removed and the blood vessels leading to their brains aren't clamped to cause strokes in barbaric experiments. They need you to give today so that intelligent, social animals are not forced into isolation and deprivation, where they lose their sanity and engage in acts of self-mutilation, such as biting their own flesh. They need you to give today so that institutions like the University of California–Davis—which has been cited for 15 violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act over the past five years—are not permitted to abuse, neglect, and kill more primates. Every cruel experiment that we end, every company that we persuade to stop shipping animals to laboratories, and every deadly test that we help get replaced with an effective, non-animal method is a reminder of what's possible when kind people take action. Please, be one of those kind people today and give what you can—even $5 makes a difference. Your gift will be matched, dollar for dollar, pushing us closer to our goal of raising $500,000 to end animal suffering in laboratories.
This e-mail was sent to sajanram.shrestha@blogger.com. Please let us know if you'd prefer that we use a different e-mail address. Want to get more active for animals? Sign up to receive additional updates about PETA's work through our subscription page. You can also choose to receive fewer e-mails or unsubscribe if you're absolutely certain that you want to become less involved in our work for animals.        This e-mail was sent by PETA, 501 Front St., Norfolk, VA 23510 USA.

Nearly 400,000 deaths from South Sudan conflict

The Refugee Brief, 27 September

By Kristy Siegfried @klsiegfried   | 27 September, 2018 WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW Nearly 400,000 deaths from South Sudan conflict. An estimated 383,000 people have died as a result of South Sudan's five-year civil war, according to a new report by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. The researchers used census projections, mortality and other data to determine that half of the estimated deaths were caused by fighting between ethnic rivals while the other half were from disease, hunger and other causes exacerbated by the conflict. The number far surpasses earlier estimates and supports the authors’ argument that the humanitarian response in South Sudan needs to be strengthened. The violence has driven the continent’s largest refugee crisis, forcing a third of the population to flee their homes. Fighting between rebels and government forces resumed less than a week after the signing of South Sudan’s latest peace deal on 13 September. On Monday, rebels attacked a military convoy escorting a group of internally displaced people back to their home area in north-western Wau State. EU inquiry into possible misuse of refugee funds managed by Greek authorities. The European Anti-Fraud Agency (OLAF) has confirmed that it’s investigating “alleged irregularities concerning the provision of EU-funded food for refugees in Greece” following information submitted by the European Commission’s directorate general of migration and home affairs in 2017. News of the inquiry emerged following the publication of an article in Greek newspaper, Fileleftheros, at the weekend alleging that businesspeople close to Defense Minister Panos Kammenos received some of the EU funding by over-charging for contracts relating to catering and plumbing. WHAT’S ON OUR RADAR Time running out to avoid famine in Yemen. Seventeen aid organizations issued a joint statement to the UN Human Rights Council on Wednesday warning that 8.4 million Yemenis are on the brink of starvation and that parties to the conflict “continue to deny or delay basic humanitarian services”. In this disturbing video, Al Jazeera reports from northern Yemen, where families with children suffering from severe malnutrition cannot afford to travel to the capital, Sana’a, to access specialist care. There are worries about how long it will take to open a promised humanitarian corridor between Sana’a and Al Hudaydah, where fighting continues to rage. More businesses commit to helping refugees. From employing thousands of refugees to investing millions of dollars in skills training, technology and educational equipment, this week 20 global companies , including Microsoft, IKEA, H&M, Sodexo and Hilton, announced plans to help thousands of refugees. The new commitments were announced on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly at an event hosted by the Tent Partnership for Refugees and the World Bank. Microsoft announced that it will invest US$2 million in a partnership with UNHCR to bring digital learning and training opportunities to refugees, while Hissho Sushi said it would help 1,250 refugees to become franchise owners in locations throughout the United States by 2023. Photography competition boosts UK campaign to reunite child refugees with families. Proposed legislation that would give child refugees in the UK the right to sponsor close family members to join them passed its second reading in Parliament in March, but the government has been accused of “dragging its heels ” to prevent the Refugee Family Reunion Bill from progressing. Amnesty UK together with UNHCR, Oxfam, the Refugee Council and the British Red Cross yesterday launched a competition to celebrate family life using photos submitted from across the country to create the UK’s Biggest Family Photo Album. The photos will then be presented to the Home Secretary along with a petition urging him to change the rules governing refugee family reunion. GET INSPIRED Until recently, South Sudanese refugees living in remote settlements in Uganda struggled to stay in touch with family members back home because of poor or non-existent mobile phone coverage. But over the past year, mobile providers have installed cell towers across the region, bringing mobile coverage and internet to millions of refugees and local Ugandans for the first time. DID YOU KNOW? Nearly 190,000 South Sudanese people are thought to have died of violent injuries between December 2013 and April 2018.

Follow UNHCR DONATE Produced by the Communications and Public Information Service.  Managing Editors: Melissa Fleming, Christopher Reardon and Sybella Wilkes Contributing Editor: Kate Bond Subscribe to The Refugee Brief or view recent issues HQP100 P.O. Box 2500 CH-1211 Geneva 2 Tel +41 22 739 85 02   |   Fax: +41 22 739 73 14 Views expressed in reports highlighted in this newsletter do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR. Unsubscribe   |   Update Profile   |   Privacy Policy   |   View this email in your browser