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Members of the International Transport Workers' Federation have joined celebrations of the release of the three remaining members of the "Miami 5" from US jail and the release of US citizen Alan Gross as part of the agreed prisoner exchange that took place last week.

Two recent cases indicate the seriousness with which the US authorities deal with ships that attempt to evade pollution prevention requirements through the use of "magic pipes" to discharge oily waste water straight into the sea.

Somaliland, the self-declared state within Somalia, has seized more than 51 Yemeni boats and an Egyptian ship, and arrested more than 250 fishers, for fishing illegally in its waters, according to reports from the BBC.

The European Union (EU) Council of Employment and Social Policy Ministers has agreed that seafarers in the EU should be given the same employment protection rights as onshore workers.

On leaving a meeting with LAN Ecuador’s manager and legal representative, Max Naranjo, at the transnational company’s offices, arranged to try and resolve the dispute caused by the dismissal of the trade union leader, Jimena López, the Minister of Labour, Carlos Ernesto Marx, said he is convinced that the dismissal violated Ecuador’s Constitution and that, in the light of the company’s refusal to adopt a conciliatory position, legal action should be taken to demand her reinstatement.

Thanks to the solidarity of local dockers who stopped cargo operations, and the assistance of ITF merchant seafarers affiliate the Syndicat des Marins Ivoiriens au Commerce (SYMICOM), 19 Fillipino seafarers in Abidjan, Ivory Coast received unpaid wages owed to them and were repatriated.

The ITF welcomed an agreement reached on 3 December between the Georgian Railway Workers' New Trade Union (GRWNTU) and JSC Georgian Railway but warned it would be keeping an eye on the situation because the company had disregarded previous agreements.

International trade union representatives on a fact-finding mission to the Turkish-Syrian border found local authorities struggling to support Kurdish refugees fleeing the barbaric violence of the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria, and called for greater transparency on how Turkey has spent and distributed international aid.

Dockers from across Europe will join their brothers and sisters at a rally in Rotterdam tomorrow (Wednesday 17 December) to protest against the impact of developments in the container sector at the port there.

Australian government must stop exploitation, says ITF