Worldcrunch
Updated August 22, 2024 at 11:50 a.m. The Alan Kurdi photograph was taken on this day in 2015. What is the Alan Kurdi picture by Nilüfer Demir? The Alan Kurdi picture is a photograph taken by Turkish photojournalist Nilüfer Demir. It depicts the lifeless body of two-year-old Syrian toddler Alan Kurdi lying face down on […]
July 10 – July 16, 2023
Hundreds of people died when a boat carrying migrants capsized on its way to Europe. Eyewitnesses raise serious accusations: were Greek officials to blame for the disaster? And what role does the “smuggling mafia” play? Die Welt reconstructs the events of the tragedy.
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-Analysis- A boat is drifting along the coast. There’s no captain manning it, no visible passengers on the derelict wooden vessel. The “ghost ship” is missing its rotor blade, making it look like it’s facing the choppy waters on its own. Eventually, it washes up on a Japanese beach. In its hull, eight bodies — […]
I’ve taken shots of fishing boats around the world. There were the ever colorful luzzus of Malta and the Phoenician-inspired shapes of the vessels of Nazaré, The traditional fishing boats here in the southern French port of Cassis are called “pointus,” for their pointy shape.
We French call our country “la France.” But when we speak of “le France,” that’s the SS France — once the biggest ocean liner in the world. In my 60 years of travels, I’ve found myself twice in its wake: here in the late 1960s, off the pier of Cannes in southern France; and some […]
Don’t worry: This little vessel in the port of Caraquet, New Brunswick, was not about to crash down. It was simply attached to the hull of a bigger fishing boat.
This man was giving his boat a fresh coat of paint on a hilly street in Valletta. Less than a year before, a U.S.-USSR summit in Malta is credited by some as having closed the Cold War. That meeting was aboard a much bigger Soviet boat anchored in the nearby harbor of Marsaxlokk.
When my grandson went on his honeymoon in Brazil two years ago, I advised him to go to Paraty, a highly picturesque colonial village south of Rio, with its very colorful harbor and cobblestone streets. He had better weather than I did.
The colorful Maltese fishing boats called luzzus are said to date back to Phoenician times. They’re famous for the small pair of eyes drawn on their hulls — an ancient superstition supposed to ward off evil and bring protection to the fishermen.
Many such “blue caves” hide under the chalky cliffs of Paxi, the small group of islands near Corfu in western Greece, where I was two months ago — marking my 12th visit to Greece in the past 53 years.
Rescue efforts continued into Wednesday as a total 14 survivors were rescued from the Eastern Star, the cruise ship carrying 456 that sank Monday night in China’s Yangtze River. So far, 19 bodies have been recovered, leaving more than 420 people unaccounted for, most of whom are by now feared dead. The boat, which departed […]
HUNDREDS MISSING AFTER CHINA SHIPWRECK At least 400 people were missing this morning after a Chinese ship carrying 458 passengers and crew was hit by an apparent cyclone and sank in the Yangtze River late yesterday, Chinese news agency Xinhua reports. So far, there are only 15 to 18 survivors, and just five bodies recovered, […]
A growing number of Syrians have been trying to escape to Europe over the past year, some meeting their tragic ends after paying smugglers to cross the Mediterranean in overcrowded boats.
Casually parked on a street near the port of Nice, on the French Riviera, was this a James Bond-like amphibious car?
Of all the boats I’ve ever seen, to me the bamboo rafts on the Li River seem the most hazardous.
Can you spot the Citroën deux chevaux parked next to that boat in the port of la Rochelle? Built from 1948 to 1990, the iconic “deuche,” as it is known here, leaves no room for doubt: It really is “la France.”
The feluccas of Aswan, Egypt, with their huge triangular sails, are used to ferry visitors to Elephantine Island, to visit their rich pharaonic ruins — and where we were able to walk in two Nubian villages that a guide guaranteed were “genuine.”
LAMPEDUSA — “Follow me,” said Jesus, “and I will make you fishers of men.” A disturbing parallel is evoked from this famous passage of the Gospel of Matthew, as nets tossed into the sea off the Italian island of Lampedusa fill up with the bodies of men… of women and children. After the latest tragic […]
ARRANMORE — The battle is not totally over, and total victory remains uncertain. But the fishermen from Arranmore have managed to make Brussels sway. This handful of diehard Irish fishermen is slowly managing to lift Europe’s fishing ban, which has been stifling the economy of this remote island for the past seven years. Arranmore is […]
AL JAZEERA (Qatar), REUTERS, ASSOCIATED PRESS Worldcrunch SITTWE – Rescuers were searching for survivors Tuesday after a boat carrying up to 200 Rohingya Muslims capsized off the western Burmese coast. Many are feared drowned among the oft-persecuted minority, who were being evacuated late Monday from low-lying regions of Burma (also referred to as Myanmar) ahead […]
GENEVA – The disappearance of many sailors has been blamed on something that doesn’t quite seem real: hallucinations, which have even prompted sailors to believe they had reached port and to climb over the railing of their boat. Loss of lucidity, loss of bearings – sleep deprivation can wreak havoc on a sailor’s mind, to […]
SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST, THE STANDARD (Hong Kong), BBC NEWS (UK) Worldcrunch HONG KONG – A large-scale rescue search is still looking for potential survivors after two ferries collided southwest of Hong Kong on Monday night, leaving at least 36 people dead, Hong Kong’s The Standard reports. “All of Hong Kong’s emergency forces are focused […]
A shockwave, an explosion, a fire. The boat lets in water and topples over, passengers hang on to life boats or jump into the waves. Few circumstances have the tragic intensity of a shipwreck, which takes mere seconds to throw human beings into life-threatening situations, where the cruelest of decisions have to be made: who […]