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Minggu, 02 Juni 2019

Out-of-control cruise ship plows into tourist boat, dock in Venice - New York Post

VENICE, Italy — A towering, out-of-control cruise ship rammed into a dock and a tourist river boat on a busy Venice canal on Sunday morning. Italian media reported that at least five people were injured in the crash.

The collision happened about 8:30 a.m. on the Giudecca Canal, a major thoroughfare that leads to Saint Mark’s Square in the northeastern Italian city.

Videos of the crash show the cruise ship, apparently unable to halt its momentum, blaring its horn as it plows into the much smaller river boat and the dock as dozens of people run away in panic.

Venice is a tremendously popular site for both tourists and cruise ships, especially during the summer tourist season.

The cruise ship’s owner, MSC Cruises, said the ship, the MSC Opera, was about to dock at a passenger terminal in Venice when it had a mechanical problem. Two towboats guiding the cruise ship into Venice tried to stop the massive cruise ship, but they were unable to prevent it from ramming into the river boat.

“The two towboats tried to stop the giant and then a tow cable broke, cut by the collision with the river boat,” Davide Calderan, president of a towboat association in Venice, told the Italian news agency ANSA.

Calderan said the cruise ship’s engine was locked when the captain called for help.

Following the accident, calls for banning cruise ships in Venice, long a source of contention in the over-extended tourist city, were renewed.

The MSC Opera was built in 2004. It can carry over 2,675 passengers in 1,071 cabins. According to its sailing schedule, the cruise ship left Venice on May 26 and traveled to Kotor, Montenegro, and Mykonos, Santorini and Corfu in Greece before returning Sunday to Venice.

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https://nypost.com/2019/06/02/out-of-control-cruise-ship-plows-into-tourist-boat-dock-in-venice/

2019-06-02 12:13:39Z
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Cruise ship out of control ploughs into tourist boat in Venice - Aljazeera.com

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 theatre, ballroom and water park for children.

#Msc #incidente a #Venezia un video https://t.co/sUncqlNRbh
— Monica Scapin🌼🐾⛵ (@monicascapin77) June 2, 2019

#MSC un altro video #incidente a #Venezia https://t.co/DDYWlITnJz Ora qualcuno provi ancora a sostenere le grandi navi @58_andy
— Monica Scapin🌼🐾⛵ (@monicascapin77) June 2, 2019

"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.

Paura a #Venezia. Grande nave sperona un'imbarcazione da turismo. All'origine dell'incidente una manovra sbagliata. Il filmato di quanto accaduto concesso dalla signora Daniela Bortolini #Ioseguotgr pic.twitter.com/U1BcllH2V8
— Tgr Rai Veneto (@TgrVeneto) June 2, 2019

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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https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/06/cruise-ship-control-plows-tourist-boat-venice-190602094032059.html

2019-06-02 11:24:00Z
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Key Merkel Coalition Partner Quits After EU Election Blowout - Bloomberg

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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-02/andrea-nahles-to-step-down-as-leader-of-german-social-democrats

2019-06-02 11:06:37Z
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Key Merkel Coalition Partner Quits After EU Election Blowout - Bloomberg

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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-02/andrea-nahles-to-step-down-as-leader-of-german-social-democrats

2019-06-02 10:28:56Z
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Key Merkel Coalition Partner Quits After EU Election Blowout - Bloomberg

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Key Merkel Coalition Partner Quits After EU Election Blowout Bloomberg
Germany's Greens shoot into first place in poll, overtaking Merkel's conservatives Reuters
Germany's Social Democrats leader resigns after vote fiasco ABC News
Leader of German Social Democrats resigns after vote fiasco Fox News
Chief of Merkel's junior coalition partner resigns The Guardian
View full coverage on Google News

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-02/andrea-nahles-to-step-down-as-leader-of-german-social-democrats

2019-06-02 09:58:47Z
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Leader of German Social Democrats resigns after vote fiasco - Fox News

BERLIN – The leader of Germany's center-left Social Democrats, a junior party in Chancellor Angela Merkel's governing coalition, is resigning after an election debacle in the European Parliament vote.

Andrea Nahles said in a statement Sunday that she wanted "clarity" after questions were raised in recent weeks about her ability to lead the party, showing she lacked members' support.

Nahles said she will be stepping down from her post as chairwoman of the Social Democrats and leader of its parliamentary faction, to ensure that her successors are found "in an orderly fashion."

The Social Democrats fell to third place behind Merkel's center-right Union bloc and the Greens in last month's European Parliament election in Germany.

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https://www.foxnews.com/world/leader-of-german-social-democrats-resigns-after-vote-fiasco

2019-06-02 08:27:08Z
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Tiananmen Square: China minister defends 1989 crackdown - BBC News

China has defended the crackdown on the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in a rare public acknowledgement of events.

Defence Minister Wei Fenghe told a regional forum that stopping the "turbulence" was the "correct" policy.

In spring 1989, students and workers occupied Beijing's Tiananmen Square in a massive pro-democracy protest. Many were killed in a brutal clampdown by the communist authorities.

Reporting on the events is heavily censored in China.

Tuesday marks 30 years since six weeks of demonstrations ended with the Beijing massacre of 3-4 June.

"That incident was a political turbulence and the central government took measures to stop the turbulence which is a correct policy," General Wei Fenghe told a security forum in Singapore, responding to a question from the audience.

"The 30 years have proven that China has undergone major changes," he said, adding that because of the government's action at that time "China has enjoyed stability and development".

The Chinese government has never said how many protesters were killed, although estimates range from the hundreds to thousands.

'Acts of forgettance'

There are no official acts of remembrance for the events of 1989 in Beijing. But that statement, although factually correct, is far too neutral.

In truth, what happened in Tiananmen Square is marked faithfully each year by a massive, national act of what might more properly be called "forgettance".

In the weeks leading up to 4 June, the world's biggest censorship machine goes into overdrive as a huge dragnet of automated algorithms and tens of thousands of human expurgators cleanse the internet of any reference, however oblique.

Those deemed to have been too provocative in their attempts to evade the controls can be jailed - with sentences of up to three and a half years recently handed down to a group of men who had tried to commemorate the anniversary with a product label.

Minggu, 02 Juni 2019

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'Acts of forgettance'