Foulness Island passing of the Ministry of Defence Act 1946 and the subsequent rationalisation of five agencies in 1971, ownership of the island passed from the War Office to the Ministry of Defence. In 2003, a contract to manage the testing of munitions was awarded to the defence contractors QinetiQ, and they also control access to the island. In the 1850s, the South Essex Estuary and Reclamation Company proposed a grand scheme to reclaim around of land on the Essex coast, which would have included most of Foulness Sands and Maplin Sands. The civil engineer Sir John Rennie produced the plans, and
Battle off the coast of Abkhazia Battle off the coast of Abkhazia The Battle off the coast of Abkhazia was a naval engagement between warships of the Russian Black Sea Fleet and Georgian patrol boats during the Russo-Georgian War. According to Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, ships of the Russian Black Sea Fleet left their base in Sevastopol, Ukraine, on the evening of 8 August. On 10 August RIA Novosti – quoting a source in the Russian Navy headquarters – reported that a group of Russian warships had arrived at the maritime border with Georgia in the eastern part of the Black Sea. According