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TOPIC: croatia

Society

Maestro Messi: Soccer As A True Art Form

The Argentine Lionel Messi is the personification of soccer sublime . He has come to move fans in ways that art lovers are moved by a painting.

This article was updated on Sep. 8, 2023 at 4:35 p.m.

-Essay-

BUENOS AIRES — Lionel Messi, that giant of soccer, is entering the twilight of his career by joining an American team, Inter Miami. He has received all the praise and glory anyone could in the world of sports, not to mention an ocean of publicity, online and offline, and all the money you could hope to earn. A while back, Marius Serra, a journalist with Barcelona paper La Vanguardia, counted 564 press articles on Messi in Spanish alone.

One is reminded of the "perfect beauty" evoked in one of Shakespeare's plays, mentioned in the novelist Stendhal's (1829) travel diary, Promenades dans Rome. Indeed, beside Messi's status as an icon for soccer fans from Buenos Aires to Bangladesh, is there an artistic dimension to this personage? His followers speak of him in superlative terms that suggest inspiration bordering on dizziness. That is how Stendhal felt viewing works of art in Florence.

One of his biggest fans is the Englishman Roy Hudson, a former footballer now based in Fort Lauderdale close to Miami. Recently he compared the exhilaration of watching Messi live to watching a Shakespeare play with the writer himself or watching Rembrandt paint. Millions of people living in Florida could now watch the greatest soccer player of all time, he said. In 2016, when Messi was in Barcelona, he compared him to the magician Houdini.

He has been a subject for at least two contemporary artists, Damien Hirst and Takashi Murakami. Hirst's triptych, Beautiful Messi Spin Painting for One in Eleven, sold for €448,000 for charity a decade ago. Though still young, he already boasts several biographies. One writer, Jordi Puntí, the author of Todo Messi, sees in him the concepts of lightness, speed, precision, visibility and multiplicity, which the Italian author Italo Calvino foresaw decades ago as shaping art and literature this century.

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Nova Kakhovka Attack — Dams Are A Favorite Target Of War

Stunning images of the attack of Nova Kakhovka dam, which had been described as a strategically important target, serve as a reminder that military forces in past wars have set off similar disasters to take out dams' power.

A major dam and hydro-electric power plant in Russian-occupied southern Ukraine was destroyed on Tuesday, prompting fear and mass evacuations as Ukraine accused Russian forces of committing an act of “ecocide.”

Videos posted to social media showed the destroyed dam and torrents of water flowing out into the river and flooding populated areas downstream, where people were forced to evacuate.

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As stunning as the images are, the attack of Nova Kakhovka is not a complete surprise. The dam had been described as a strategically important target since the beginning of the war, and the Ukrainian government warned in 2022 that destroying it would cause a "large-scale disaster."

Indeed, the attack is just the most recent example of military forces seeing the massive potential energy stored behind hydroelectric dams as an offensive weapon. Destroying these critical pieces of infrastructure can destroy cities and spread terror, as well as disrupt agriculture and industry, and cripple power generation.

Here are some of the most notable wartime dam attacks in history:

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LNG Carriers, Europe's Floating Response To Russia's Gas War

From Croatia to Spain, Portugal, Germany and France, revamped LNG gas routes are providing an agile European energy response to the cutting off of Russian gas since the war in Ukraine began.

KRK — Tourists know the island of Krk, in northern Croatia, for its heavenly coves that open onto the Adriatic Sea’s translucent waters. But now, Krk will also be known for its strategic role in the energy security of Croatia and Central Europe.

Not far from the beaches, a 280-meter-long ship carrying natural gas is moored in a bay, protected from storms. This blue and white ship, known as the “LNG Croatia” has been completely reconfigured to become a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal.

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Over the past two years, more than fifty LNG carriers have unloaded their valuable cargo in Krk — mainly from the Gulf of Mexico, in the United States, but also from Qatar, Egypt, Nigeria, Trinidad and elsewhere.

In the countries where it is produced, the gas is cooled at a temperature of minus 160°C, so it can be transported in liquid form. After arriving at Krk, it is transferred to the "LNG Croatia” ship, where it is heated with seawater and becomes gaseous again, and then transported ashore through a large pipe. Once ashore, the gas is pressurized and injected into a pipeline that flows into the Croatian gas network, as well as pipelines that connect to neighboring Slovenia and Hungary.

The LNG Croatia is a boat that no longer sails. But Boris Martic, its captain, is still surprised by his country’s new situation. “All around here, it’s crowded with tourists in the summer,” he says, pointing from the sunny deck of the vessel. "I would have never imagined, only a few years ago, that Croatia was going to become an LNG import hub.”

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Putin’s Hypersonic Missiles, Pope Benedict’s Funeral, Will & Harry’s Brawl

👋 ¡Ola!*

Welcome to Thursday, where Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly deploys hypersonic missiles, the funeral for Pope Benedict is held in Rome, and Prince Harry accuses his brother William of a physical attack. Meanwhile, Stephane Frachet in business daily Les Echos has everything you knead to know about France’s baguette battle.

[*Galician, Spain]

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Migrant Lives
Benedetta Zocchi

On The Border Of Bosnia: Voices Of Afghan Migrants

As the Taliban closed in on Afghanistan, the European Union co-signed a joint statement with dozens of nations agreeing that "the Afghan people deserve to live in safety, security and dignity" and that the international community was "ready to assist them".

As someone who has been researching the refugee crisis on Europe's borders for years, I found the statement surprising. Before it was making bold statements about events in Kabul, the EU had spent years failing to help thousands of Afghans seeking help at its borders.

Since 2015, more than 570,000 Afghan citizens have sought protection in the EU. Thousands of them remain stuck in Bosnia and Herzegovina, after having been pushed back by the Croatian police catching them on the EU border.

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Coronavirus
Clément Guillou

Croatia's Empty Pearl: A Dreamy, Tourist-Free Dubrovnik

Normally, the so-called 'Pearl of the Adriatic' would be teeming with tourists right now. Instead, the Croatian coastal city is strangely — but also wonderfully — empty.

DUBROVNIK — The city seems to be crawling with them these days. They're everywhere, basking in the shade of stone houses, trotting around in the evenings on the white marble, making a ruckus at night.

For the past three months, cats have had Dubrovnik all to themselves. The "Pearl of the Adriatic," as it's known, is Croatia's top tourist destination. And yet, since the lockdown ended in May — and despite it being a country that the COVID-19 pandemic largely spared — hardly anyone has returned.

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LA STAMPA
Jacopo Pasotti*

Overfishing: Italy And Croatia Reel In To Preserve Adriatic

Experts are pushing for expansion of the Fossa di Pomo project, which limits fishing to two days a week across a 1,500-km stretch of sea.

TRIESTE — The Adriatic Sea is becoming depleted, and could turn into a kind of underwater "eco-desert." There is one solution, however, that both Italian fishermen and scientists agree on. It lies in the ‘Fossa di Pomo" project (named after the expanse of sea it protects), an international experiment which could help the fish fauna repopulate the basin.

But time is running out. Especially for anchovies and sardines, which together account for 30% of all Italian catch and 80% of the Croatian haul. "It's a terrible situation, more dramatic than we've seen in decades," affirms Simone Libralato, a doctoral researcher at the National Institute of Oceanography and Geophysics (OGS) in Trieste.

The population of bluefish has nearly collapsed, according to the European Union's Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries (STECF). Mackerel, tuna and other species are also being fished at unsustainable levels. Only six out of 47 economically significant species are not overfished.

Sasa Raicevich, a researcher at the Institute for Environmental Protection and Research in Chioggia, just south of Venice, says an opportunity risks being squandered by overfishing. "The Adriatic could be a hot spot for fishing, but now Croatia and Italy are competing for resources," he explains "There nevertheless remains a desire to not completely lose this resource."

In point of fact, it is Italian fishermen who bring home between 70-80% of all the fish being caught in the Adriatic— most of which are pulled out of the Croatian side of the basin. For Italy, a market estimated at 263 million euros is at stake.

"The former Yugoslavia used to practically be a protected area. Fishing was an artisanal activity practiced near the coastline," explains Raicevich. "Since entering the EU, Croatia has dedicated itself to industrial fishing, equipping itself with a fishing fleet and going beyond the 12 nautical miles that fall under its legal jurisdiction."

And now, as Italy has begun limiting its fishing in the Adriatic, Croatia has ramped up its activity.

A fish market in Rijeka, Croatia — Photo: Marco Verch/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

In the 1970s, Italy used to fish between 70,000 and 90,000 tons of sardines and anchovies each year, according to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. Today, it's between 40,000 and 60,000 tons per year. In the 1990s, the Croatian fleet would catch 16,000 tons of bluefish. Today, it's 60,000 tons.

Despite the rapidly diminishing fish fauna, new technologies and ever-more more advanced ships mean fishing capacity is on the rise, threatening the future survival of both fish and fishermen.

The fishermen themselves acknowledge the situation. "Up until 10 years ago I had never seen a Croatian fishing vessel," notes Renzo Zennaro, a retired fishermen in Chioggia. "Today you cross them even in international waters. The problem is that there's just too many of us."

Guido De Grassi, a Trieste fisherman, concurs: "Before you were like Moses: you walked on water, from how many fish there were...We used to measure fish in tons, not kilos!"

How can two countries cooperate to protect their joint resources?

Now there is a new strategy, proposed by Libralato and his Croatian and Slovenian colleagues, enacted jointly by the countries ringing the Adriatic: the European FAIRSEA Project. The idea is to take advantage of the natural mobility of the fish. Protected areas are established, allowing the fish to breed, repopulate, then move out into the rest of the basin.

For now, only one percent of the Adriatic is a protected area: the "Fossa di Pomo," known in English as the Mid-Adriatic Pit (MAD), but the experiment could become a new model. "The creation of this restricted-fishing zone in the center of the basin is a bilateral initiative between Italy and Croatia," explains Nedo Vrgoc, a researcher at the Institute of Oceanography and Fishing in the Croatian city of Split. "It is the biggest protected area in the Mediterranean: a 1,500 kilometer-stretch of sea where fishing is forbidden, or only allowed in buffer zones two times per week. It's an example of how two countries can cooperate to protect their joint resources."

According to Libralato, since the Fossa di Pomo began to be safeguarded in 2016, signs of improvement have already been seen. For example, the hake population is recovering. "That's the point of the protected area: species repopulate, then migrate to areas where fishing is allowed," adds the Italian researcher.

The proposed solution, then, is a mix of measures, regulating fishing intensity and periodically closing some areas in order to allow fish to repopulate. The fishermen, however, must also be taken care of. Simply maintaining vessels has a cost, and each fishing ban is a serious blow to their incomes, explains Libralato. But the payoff will eventually be reaped in more fish, healthier fish, larger fish.

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food / travel
Bertrand Hauger

The Missing Croatian Well

The "Five Wells Square" in the old Croatian city of Zadar is not a misnomer: For some reason, I could only squeeze four of them in that shot. Oh, well.

Economy
Jean-Arnault Dérens and Laurent Geslin

Will Croatia's Quest For Energy Independence Cost It Krk?

A popular tourist destination in the Adriatic sea is bracing for the construction of a floating, 400-million-euro regasification facility.

NJIVICE — The tourism season hasn't begun yet on the island of Krk, in the northern Adriatic, where silhouettes of tankers and container ships on their way to the port of Rijeka stand out against the background of the Kvarner Gulf, casting their immense shadows on the fishermen's boats.

Drazen Lesica looks out at the sea from the window of his family restaurant, founded in 1934 by his great-grandparents in the village of Njivice. "Fishing is our wealth," he says. "We've been working with the same families of sailors for three generations. But with the construction of the gas terminal, the bay will turn into a chlorinated pool."

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blog

Pit Stop, Watermelon Seeds

Under the authoritarian regime of Josip Broz Tito in then Yugoslavia, lots of shop windows were empty. Roadside vendors were a more reliable source of food there, with watermelons being a staple of domestic agriculture.