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Sources

Hit It! Idina Menzel, Nancy Ajram, More On World Music Charts

Hit It! Idina Menzel, Nancy Ajram, More On World Music Charts

Below are some of the songs currently topping the charts around the world.

Worldcrunch Pick

British singer Kate Bush announced Friday on her website that she will play her first series of shows since 1979 in August and September across the UK. The first woman to top the British charts with a song of her own (with "Wuthering Heights", in 1978) is set to begin a run of 15 shows, dubbed "Before the Dawn," at London's Eventim Apollo, in Hammersmith, on August 26.

Concerning additional shows or works in the future, Bush said "it’s certainly not in the picture at the moment because I just don’t quite know how that would work with how my life is now", The Guardianreported.

Cover photo: Mircea (via Flickr)

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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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