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Germany

Yemen Chaos, Remembering Germanwings, Chewie's Home

Yemen Chaos, Remembering Germanwings, Chewie's Home

AL-QAEDA GAINS AMID YEMEN CHAOS

Airstrikes from the Saudi-led coalition against Yemen’s Houthi rebels have “indirectly helped empower al-Qaeda in ways the group had not enjoyed before” because the focus elsewhere leaves them “unopposed,” The New York Times writes. The jihadist group has seized a major airport, a military base and a significant oil terminal, expanding the territory it controls in southern Yemen. Meanwhile, coalition warplanes have continued to target Houthi positions, killing at least 36 people, including three civilians.


MEMORIAL SERVICE FOR GERMANWINGS CRASH VICTIMS

Photo: Jurgen Corveleyn via Instagram

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other officials are attending a memorial service for the 150 victims of last month’s Germanwings plane crash. About 1,500 people are expected to gather in Cologne’s Gothic Cathedral.


WIKILEAKS RELEASES ALL SONY EMAILS

WikiLeaks has published more than 30,000 documents and 170,000 emails stolen from Sony Pictures at the height of last year’s hacking scandal that was blamed on North Korea. According to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, the archive belongs in “the public domain” because Sony is an “influential multinational corporation” that is “at the center of a geopolitical conflict.”


ON THIS DAY


The Cambodian civil war ended 40 years ago today. Time for your 57-second shot of history.


PRO-RUSSIAN JOURNO KILLED IN KIEV

Pro-Russian journalist Oles Buzina was killed yesterday by two masked gunmen outside his home in Kiev, Ukraine. Sky News reports the circumstances of his killing were similar to those of opposition politician Oleg Kalashnikov’s murder the previous day. Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko called the crimes “a conscious provocation” meant to “destabilize” the Ukrainian government. According to Russia’s Sputnik News, Ukrainian nationalist politicians applauded Buzina’s murder, calling him a “degenerate” who had led a “bastard life.” This comes as 300 U.S. paratroopers arrived in Ukraine to train the country’s National Guard. Canada is also preparing to send 200 troops.


WORLDCRUNCH-TO-GO

It's an untold story that offers hope during troubled times in Europe, the Middle East and beyond. Anna Boros survived the Holocaust thanks to a courageous Egyptian doctor, Süddeutsche Zeitung’s Zweiter Weltkrieg reports. “The Jewish teenager he saved visited Dr. Mohammed Helmy because she wasn't allowed to go to a white doctor, his descendents say. Helmy stayed voluntarily in Berlin during the Nazi reign because ‘he wanted to help to treat the sick and wounded.’ While doing so, the Egyptian Helmy walked a very fine line between adaptation and subversion from 1933 onward. But he succeeded in executing a brilliant plan to save Anna’s life.”

Read the full article: When A Muslim Doctor Saved A Jewish Teenager From The Nazis.


AFRICAN MIGRANTS DROWN CHRISTIANS

Italy’s migrant crisis was made worse yesterday after Sicily police arrested 15 African migrants accused of killing 12 other migrants by throwing them off a boat for being Christian.


EXTRA!

TIME Magazine revealed, as it does every year, its list of the 100 most influential people in the world, with five different covers. Kanye West was chosen as head of the “Titans” category. Read more about it on our 4 Corners blog.


590 KPH

Central Japan Railway Co.’s magnetic levitation bullet train has set a new world speed record of 590 kilometers per hour (367 miles per hour), smashing the previous record it set 12 years ago. The train operator said it would attempt to reach 600 kph as early as next year.


VETERAN CHINESE JOURNALIST JAILED

Gao Yu, one of China’s top journalists, has been sentenced to seven years in prison after a court found her guilty of “leaking state secrets abroad,” South China Morning Post reports. The 71-year-old will also be stripped of her political rights for a year after her release. Amnesty International characterized the sentence as “deplorable,” saying it was “nothing more than blatant political persecution.”


MY GRAND-PÈRE’S WORLD



VERBATIM

“No amount of frustration or anger can ever justify the attacks on foreign nationals and the looting of their shops,” South African President Jacob Zuma said as a wave of violent anti-immigrant protests spread to Johannesburg. The unrest has already killed six people and led hundreds of foreigners to flee.


CHEWY’S HOME

The latest trailer for the upcoming Star Wars movie The Force Awakens will please fans of the original trilogy. And is Darth Vader still alive? Watch it here.

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Society

Genoa Postcard: A Tale Of Modern Sailors, Echos Of The Ancient Mariner

Many seafarers are hired and fired every seven months. Some keep up this lifestyle for 40 years while sailing the world. Some of those who'd recently docked in the Italian port city of Genoa, share a taste of their travels that are connected to a long history of a seafaring life.

A sailor smokes a cigarette on the hydrofoil Procida

A sailor on the hydrofoil Procida in Italy

Daniele Frediani/Mondadori Portfolio via ZUMA Press
Paolo Griseri

GENOA — Cristina did it to escape after a tough breakup. Luigi because he dreamed of adventures and the South Seas. Marianna embarked just “before the refrigerator factory where I worked went out of business. I’m one of the few who got severance pay.”

To hear their stories, you have to go to the canteen on Via Albertazzi, in Italy's northern port city of Genoa, across from the ferry terminal. The place has excellent minestrone soup and is decorated with models of the ships that have made the port’s history.

There are 38,000 Italian professional sailors, many of whom work here in Genoa, a historic port of call that today is the country's second largest after Trieste on the east coast. Luciano Rotella of the trade union Italian Federation of Transport Workers says the official number of maritime workers is far lower than the reality, which contains a tangle of different laws, regulations, contracts and ethnicities — not to mention ancient remnants of harsh battles between shipowners and crews.

The result is that today it is not so easy to know how many people sail, nor their nationalities.

What is certain is that every six to seven months, the Italian mariner disembarks the ship and is dismissed: they take severance pay and after waits for the next call. Andrea has been sailing for more than 20 years: “When I started out, to those who told us we were earning good money, I replied that I had a precarious life: every landing was a dismissal.”

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