Hanjin Shipping has elected to file for court receivership, the first step towards what will be the largest container line bankruptcy in history - six times larger than the collapse of United States Lines three decades ago, the previous record holder.

Currently, containers, ships and other intermodal transport assets such as chassis and gensets are mainly what we call "dark, dumb and disconnected." What this means is that we really don't know much about them. They are not self-aware, we can't see them, and they can't tell us about their actions and status.

Iran, Russia and India have revived long-stalled discussions on a multimodal North-South Transportation Corridor linking Mumbai to the port of Bandar Abbas to Moscow. The 4,000-mile route would bypass the Suez Canal, cutting weeks off of the sea route from the Arabian Sea to the Baltic.

The IMO has launched Glomeep.imo.org, a website with information about energy-efficient technologies - covering areas such as machinery, propulsion systems, hull improvements and energy recovery.

The Panama Canal Authority has refuted reports that there have been three collisions in the newly expanded Panama Canal.

Pirate attacks on shipping in the first half of 2016 are at the lowest level since 1995, even taking the recent spate of kidnappings in the Gulf of Guinea and the Sulu Sea into account, says the IMB Piracy Reporting Centre.

For those in dry bulk shipping, the market since the beginning of 2014 has been the worst downturn since the mid-eighties. Access to finance and liquidity will likely continue to be a pressing corporate issue for ship owners until the markets recover, and the longer this takes the worse the situation will get.