Isports ATBP.

(This story was published in the Pacific Island Times, where I currently do freelance work. I used a pen name back then to prevent any conflict with the Saipan Tribune. The Pacific Island Times is a Guam-based magazine with  veteran journalist Mar-Vic Cagurangan as publisher. https://www.pacificislandtimes.com/single-post/2017/12/05/It%E2%80%99s-not-new-but-%E2%80%98birth-tourism%E2%80%99-is-a-growing-CNMI-industry Birth tourism is an issue in the CNMI and it was again thrown into the spotlight a few years ago after the Federal Bureau of Investigation discovered an alleged large-scale operation on the island of Saipan following a tip made by a local physician. Birth tourism has become an underground industry in the CNMI with pregnant Chinese women flocking to Saipan to give birth on U.S. soil, which  automatically provides American citizenship to their newborn child. Most of these women leave the CNMI after childbirth and receive their babies’ U.S. passports. Early mo

The global transshipment industry had been vital to the world economy. It makes sure goods and other products reach their destinations fast and on time. It is one of the backbones of the world’s commercial fishing industry, a multimillion-dollar network composed of refrigerated cargo vessels crisscrossing the seas and transporting the fish and other seafood caught from the ocean to shore. The practice of transshipment covers a wide range of seafood products like the popular tuna—bigeye, skipjack, and yellowfin—salmon, mackerel, and crab where thousands of fishing vessels transport the catch from the sea to the markets and producers until it reaches your plate. But while it speeds up the process of transporting fish and other edible marine resources, it also has damaging effects like the lack of conservation and management efforts due to overfishing which further threatens the improvement of the health of diminishing fish stocks. As the global population increases by a rate of 1.08

The Marianas Trench continues to be a mysterious place for scientists and human beings in general. It remains one of the most inaccessible places on our planet where species of some known and unknown creatures inhabit the area. That’s why it was surprising to know that radioactive material was detected in one of the most remote regions in the Pacific. The Marianas Trench is a crescent-shaped trough located in the Western Pacific Ocean. It is believed to be roughly 2,550 kilometers long and 69 kilometers wide, with a depth of 36,201 feet below sea level. It is located 200 miles east of the Marianas island chain, in between Japan and Papua New Guinea. Despite its remote location, this has not stopped humanity to have an environmental impact on its unique ecosystem. A group of scientists, led by earth experts from the Shanghai Ocean University, found traces of the radioactive element Carbon-14, which dates back from the nuclear weapons detonations conducted in the mid-1940s. Tra