While incidents of piracy decline off the Horn of Africa, an inestimable number of seafarers continue to bear the psychological impact of captivity by pirates. To describe their condition and to advise the maritime industry on how to care for affected individuals, the Seamen's Church Institute (SCI), in collaboration with New York's Mount Sinai School of Medicine, has released a report from its clinical study of the effects of piracy on seafarers.

Wider financial, environmental and social benefits need to be documented for green building if it is to maintain the growth seen in the past decade, according to research by McGraw-Hill Construction.

Facebook is becoming prime real estate for small retailers rather than the mega-mall that the big chains had hoped it would be. Second-quarter profits from Facebook stores were up 38 percent from the first quarter for the 180,000 small to mid-sized retailers, and have been going strong ever since, says e-commerce company Ecwid, which makes store-building software to work across social-media platforms and Web sites.

Drewry, the U.K.-based maritime research and advisory firm, has created a new service, Drewry Maritime Equity research, to produce investment reports on companies operating in the maritime industry.

Two countries providing flags of convenience to merchant vessels, Panama and Cyprus, threw up roadblocks to the safe carriage of containerized cargo recently. With more than 80 percent of world cargo being moved on container ships and those ships getting ever larger, any measure that can make these shipments safer must be considered. Sadly, these countries find that some proposed measures are inconvenient.

Consumers in India and China are the new kings and queens of the global economy. They have fast-changing tastes and appetites, and they are transforming the world with their consumption.