Month: June 2019

A massive cruise ship lost control as it docked in Venice on Sunday, crashing into the wharf and hitting a tourist boat after suffering an engine failure.

Tourists on land could be seen running away as the 13-deck MSC Opera scraped along the dockside, its engine blaring, before knocking into a tourist boat, amateur video footage posted on Twitter showed.

Four people were slightly injured in the accident at San Basilio-Zattere in Venice’s Giudecca Canal, port authorities said.

The four, who were taken to hospital for check-ups, were on board the River Countess tourist boat.

The Opera, which suffered mechanical trouble before in 2011 during a Baltic cruise, can carry more than 2,500 passengers and boasts a theater, ballroom and water park for children.

Ship unable to stop

“The MSC ship had an engine failure, which was immediately reported by the captain,” Davide Calderan, head of a tugboat company involved in accompanying the ship into its berth, told Italian media.

“The engine was blocked, but with its thrust on, because the speed was increasing,” he said.

The two tug boats that had been guiding the ship into the Giudecca tried to slow it, but one of the chains linking them to the giant snapped under the pressure, he added.

The accident reignited a heated row in the Serenissima over the damage caused to the city and its fragile ecosystem by cruise ships that sail exceptionally close to the shore.

While gondoliers in striped T-shirts and woven straw hats row tourists around the narrow canals, the smoking chimneys of mammoth ships loom into sight behind the city’s picturesque bell towers and bridges.

Critics say the waves the ships create are eroding the foundations of the lagoon city, which regularly floods, leaving iconic sites such as Saint Mark’s Square underwater.

“What happened in the port of Venice is confirmation of what we have been saying for some time,” Italy’s environment minister Sergio Costa wrote on Twitter.

“Cruise ships must not sail down the Giudecca. We have been working on moving them for months now… and are nearing a solution,” he said.

‘Risk of carnage’

Venice’s port authority said it was was working to resolve the accident and free up the blocked canal in the north Italian city.

“In addition to protecting the Unesco heritage city, we have to safeguard the environment, and the safety of citizens and tourists,” Culture Minister Alberto Bonisoli said.

Nicola Fratoianni, an MP with the Italian Left party, noted Italy’s open-armed attitude to cruise ships contrasted sharply with its hostile approach to charity rescue vessels that help migrants who run into difficulty in the Mediterranean.

“It is truly curious that a country that tries to stop ships that have saved people at sea from entering its ports allows giant steel monsters to risk carnage in Venice,” he said.

MSC Cruises, founded in Italy in 1960, is a global line registered in Switzerland and based in Geneva.

The Opera, built 15 years ago, suffered a power failure in 2011 in the Baltic, forcing some 2,000 people to be disembarked in Stockholm rather than continuing their Southampton to Saint Petersburg voyage.
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The captain of a river cruise ship that collided with a smaller sightseeing vessel was charged Saturday over the accident in Budapest that killed seven South Korean tourists and left 21 missing. 

The Mermaid, carrying mainly South Korean tourists, overturned and sank late Wednesday, seconds after colliding with the Viking Sigyn cruise ship on a busy stretch of the Danube in the heart of Budapest.

Strong currents have hampered the search for those missing — 19 South Koreans and two Hungarians — preventing divers from reaching the submerged boat.

The Sigyn’s Ukrainian captain was charged Saturday, a Budapest court official told AFP, but gave no further details.

The 64-year-old was detained Thursday for questioning for “endangering waterborne traffic resulting in multiple deaths,” police have said. 

The captain’s attorney, Balazs Toth, said the court had granted bail but prosecutors were appealing, so his client remained detained.

“He is devastated by the number of victims and is asking constantly that condolences are conveyed to their families,” Toth said.

“My client has not changed his statement made as a witness. He insists that he has not made any error,” his other attorney, Gabor Elo, told reporters after the hearing. 

Help sought in search

Near the accident site, a floating crane was erected, as well as a small pier for use by divers. 

But with the Danube swollen after weeks of rain, the strong current has complicated plans to lift the wreck, and the prospects of finding any of the passengers alive were seen as very slim.

Serbia, Romania and Croatia — countries along the Danube, south of Hungary — have been asked to help in the search after South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha insisted in Budapest on Friday that her country would not give up hope of finding survivors.

One of the bodies was found about 11 kilometers (seven miles) downstream of the accident site. 

South Korean relatives of the Mermaid passengers arrived in Budapest Friday, and officials took them to the banks of the Danube.

The Hungarian Magyar Nemzet daily, meanwhile, on Saturday quoted police reports as saying the Sigyn might not have warned the pilot of the smaller ship that he was going to overtake.

According to the newspaper, he also did not alert police about the collision.
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Britain’s Border Force intercepted 74 people Saturday, including minors, on eight vessels trying to cross the English Channel into Britain. French authorities stopped two other boats. 

The interceptions on an exceptionally sunny, warm day will heighten concerns that improving weather will encourage smugglers to try their luck at bringing more migrants to the U.K. from France.  

Authorities said a criminal investigation was underway. The nationalities of the migrants were still being determined. Coast guard officials said the incidents stretched along Britain’s southeast coast, from the port of Dover to Winchelsea Beach near Hastings, 50 miles (80 kilometers) away. 

Home Secretary Sajid Javid vowed that he would work with French border authorities to halt this rise in people trafficking across the Channel. 

“Those who choose to make this dangerous journey across one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world are putting their lives in grave danger — and I will continue to do all I can to stop them,” he said in a statement Saturday night. 

Local lawmaker Charlie Elphicke suggested the numbers were unprecedented and demanded action. 

‘Get a grip on this crisis’

This crisis was meant to have been dealt with at Christmas, yet numbers continue to rise,'' he wrote on Twitter.The Home Office needs to get a grip on this crisis.” 

The reports about migrants using small boats to cross the English Channel to Britain are politically explosive, even though Britain has not seen nearly as many migrant sea crossings as have fellow European Union nations Spain, Italy and Greece. So far this year, over 21,300 migrants have crossed the Mediterranean Sea into Europe, and at least 519 others have died trying, according to the International Organization for Migration. 

In December last year, Javid declared a rise in migrant crossings to be a “major incident.”  He said Saturday that since then, two cutters have returned to U.K. waters from overseas and he has agreed upon a joint action plan to halt human smuggling with his French counterparts. 

Officials have blamed the influx on smuggling gangs. 

It is an established principle that those in need of protection should claim asylum in the first safe country they reach, and since January, more than 30 people who arrived illegally in the U.K. in small boats have been returned to Europe,'' Javid said.We will continue to seek to return anyone who has entered the U.K. illegally.” 

Overall, migration into Europe is down substantially since over 1 million asylum-seekers and migrants came to the continent in 2015, but the issue still resonates politically, including in the elections last week to the European Parliament. 
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Pope Francis braved a rain-soaked, twisting drive through the mountains of Transylvania on Saturday to visit Romania’s most famous shrine, urging Romanian and ethnic Hungarian faithful to work together for their future.

Storms forced Francis to change his travel plans and add in a three-hour car ride through the Carpathian mountains that he had planned to traverse via helicopter. The steady rains doused the estimated 80,000-100,000 people who gathered for the Mass at the Sumuleu Ciuc shrine, which is dedicated to the Virgin Mary.

The showers let up as Francis arrived and he made a quick run through the poncho-clad crowds in his popemobile. But the 82-year-old seemed unsteady after the long trip and held onto the arms of aides as he negotiated a mud-slicked path to get to the altar for Mass.

In his homily, Francis praised the multicultural and multilingual tapestry that makes up Romania and urged its people to put aside past divisions for the sake of “journeying together.”

The rights of around 1.2 million ethnic Hungarians who live in Romania have been at the center of political disputes between the two countries for decades. Hungary lost Transylvania in the peace treaties after World War I yet the region remains heavily Hungarian in both culture and language.

Those tensions are often reflected in the uneasy relationship between the predominantly Hungarian Roman Catholic community and the Romanian-speaking Greek-Catholic communities. The two rites make up Romania’s Catholic minority in the overwhelmingly Orthodox country.

“Complicated and sorrow-filled situations from the past must not be forgotten or denied, yet neither must they be an obstacle or an excuse standing in the way of our desire to live together as brothers and sisters,” Francis said.

The pope delivered the homily in Italian, and it was translated into Romanian and Hungarian.

After Mass, with the weather improved, Francis was able to fly by helicopter back to the airport for a flight to another corner of Romania, the university city of Iasi in the northeast. There he had an appointment with young Romanians.

Francis was travelling across Romania to visit its far-flung Catholic communities to make up for the fact that St. John Paul II was only allowed to visit the capital, Bucharest, in 1999 in the first papal visit to a majority Orthodox country.

 
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On a trip to Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Britain, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is seeking common ground with European allies, despite fundamental differences over the United States’ withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and doing business with Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei. VOA’s Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine has more from Washington, as talks between Pompeo and German Chancellor Angela Merkel wrapped Friday.
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A Turkish-American scientist who was recently released from three years in a Turkish prison said Friday he wants to return to the United States and his former job at NASA.

Serkan Golge, a naturalized U.S. citizen, was freed Wednesday shortly after U.S. President Donald Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke by telephone.

Golge is on probation and has been staying in his family home in Antakya, a southern Turkish city near the Syrian border.

Not so much as a traffic ticket

Golge told VOA Friday during an interview in his home that the conditions of his release prohibit him from returning to the United States.

“I am on probation now,” Golge said, saying he must “go to a local police station four days a week.”

Golge said his passport has been returned to him, but said he does not want to violate his probation conditions by leaving the country. 

“I have never violated any laws in my life, neither in Turkey or in the United States. I don’t even have a traffic ticket,” he said.

Arrested in wake of coup attempt

Golge was on a family visit in southern Turkey when he was arrested in July 2016 in the aftermath of a failed military coup against President Erdogan.

Turkey blames the coup on supporters of exiled Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who lives in the United States, and Turkish authorities charged Golge with ties to Gulen.

Golge was sentenced in 2018 to 7½ years in prison despite U.S. State Department protests that there was no credible evidence of wrongdoing. A Turkish appeals court subsequently reduced his sentence to five years.

Golge told VOA he always objected to the “unfounded claims” against him.

Golge’s wife, Kurbra, told media outlets this week she is joyful about her husband’s release, but said he is not allowed to travel to the United States.

President Trump said in remarks to reporters Thursday that Golge would “pretty soon” be able to leave the country. He also thanked Erdogan for releasing Golge.

​Meeting at G20

Trump and Erdogan are to meet at next month’s Group of 20 summit. The United States and Turkey are at odds over Turkey’s plans to acquire a missile defense system from Russia. They also have disagreements over Washington’s support of Kurdish rebels in Syria and the U.S. government not extraditing Gulen to Turkey.

At the time of his arrest, Golge was working for the U.S. space agency in Houston, studying the effects of radiation on astronauts.

“I would love to go back to NASA,” Golge said. “I’m a scientist and I’ve been away from science for three years.”
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Serkan Golge, a naturalized U.S. citizen, was freed from a Turkish prison Wednesday shortly after U.S. President Donald Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke by telephone. Golge was visiting family in southern Turkey when he was arrested in a sweeping crackdown that followed a failed military coup in 2016.
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