French Energy Minister Segolene Royal is investigating legal means to ban the import of shale gas from the United States because France has banned shale gas exploration using hydraulic fracking for environmental reasons.

German container shipping company Hapag-Lloyd has announced a new international shipping alliance which is due to start up in April 2017 for initially five years, spanning 18 percent of global container fleet capacity.

Last Thursday, the U.S. Senate passed the FY2017 Energy and Water Development Appropriations Bill by a wide margin of 90 to eight. It is the first appropriations legislation to pass the Senate this year, and it incorporates $6bn in funding for the Civil Works Program of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the agency charged with maintenance and improvements to navigable waterways.

America will fall $1.44tr short of what it needs to spend on infrastructure through the next decade, a gap that could strip 2.5 million jobs and $4tr of gross domestic product from the economy, a report from a society of professional engineers said on Tuesday.

Disagreement among nations means no carbon emissions targets have been set for international shipping, but voices from within the industry are calling for global curbs to be set soon, before countries or regional blocs take matters into their own hands.