Arguments about the Stormont cuts tend to be a little circular, with the unions insisting the axe is falling on the most vulnerable and executive ministers pleading that they have no option given the decline in the UK block grant in real terms (if not cash terms).
But without a lot more help from national governments, especially in hazardous areas like the Persian Gulf and Southeast Asia, the tankers will remain highly vulnerable, the executives said.
Fears of terrorist attacks and a sluggish economy have cut new bookings almost by half in some popular resort areas, with the smaller islands of the eastern Caribbean especially vulnerable, travel executives and tourism officials said.
Companies that willfully deceive the public are particularly vulnerable, said Annie Leonard, executive director of Greenpeace USA.
"Aboriginal women here in Manitoba are vulnerable," said Trudy Lavallee, executive director of Ikwe Widdjiitiwin, a crisis shelter in Winnipeg for aboriginal women at risk of violence.
"This West Village area is very vulnerable," said Kimberly S. Kearns, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, "especially with the wonderful new Hudson River park that is being built".
"They're feeling more vulnerable," said Monica Santana, executive director of the Latino Workers Center, a nonprofit group in Manhattan that receives 100 calls a week from immigrants across the state in need of help, double the number from last year.
"A community that had essentially been trying to remain invisible suddenly concluded that their invisibility was only making them more vulnerable," Frank Sharry, the executive director of the National Immigration Forum, told the Washington Post.
"She and her family have left our community a tremendous gift, a cancer center that provides compassionate care to patients at their most vulnerable," Barry Wolfman, chief executive of Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center, said in a statement.
"We are opening up a totally new industry in the deep-sea environment, and the deep-sea environment is a vulnerable environment," Monica Verbeek, executive director of Seas At Risk, a Brussels-based association of European environmental groups, told The Huffington Post.
