US Navy helicopters and divers were trawling the Gulf on Friday, searching for survivors of a crowded pleasure boat that capsized off the coast of Bahrain, killing up to 57 people.
Scores of survivors, some still wearing dinner jackets and evening dress, were treated at the main hospital in the capital, Manama, as the authorities began piecing together what had caused the dhow, al-Dana, to sink. Amid reports that the boat was dangerously overcrowded with up to 150 people aboard, it emerged that the captain had initially refused to leave the port of Muharraq, in the north of the island, because there were too many people on board.
One survivor, Jai Kumar George, a 37-year-old engineer from India who has lived in Bahrain for six years, described how he was thrown into the water as the boat listed and capsized in seconds. But he was one of the lucky ones. Those trapped in the stricken vessel behind unbreakable glass windows rapidly suffocated.
"We crashed across the deck and straight into the water," George said. "We helped each other to reach the side of the boat. I saw people inside asking me to break the glass. I started to kick. I didn't have anything with me that I could use and the glass was not breaking. Most of the people suffocated and died inside."
Witnesses said they saw passengers struggling in the water and attempting to swim the mile to shore after the boat capsized about an hour-and-a-half into its two-hour round trip from the Marina club, Manama, on Thursday night.
An investigation began as several people described how they had decided not to go on the boat because it was overcrowded. Raymond Austin, 50, a British who works for a concrete company in Bahrain, chose not to board. He telephoned his daughter Rebecca at their home in Kent on Friday to tell her he was well.
David Pouponneau, harbor manager for the Marina club, said he watched as the dhow, which had capacity for 100 passengers, set sail at 8pm on Thursday.
"It was licensed for 100 but there were about 150 on board. Thursday night was a dinner cruise and was due to last a couple of hours. What is thought is that it capsized as it turned around to come back, but no one knows what happened, the weather was fine," he said.
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
‘CROSSING THE LINE’: China’s embassy in Seoul criticized US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson, asking if his ‘hostile’ remarks were authorized by Washington South Korea and the US are in talks over recent public remarks by the commander of US Forces Korea, Seoul’s presidential office said yesterday, after the comments drew sharp criticism from China. In a recent podcast interview, US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson described South Korea as “the dagger in the heart of Asia” from China’s east coast, prompting the Chinese embassy in Seoul to say that he had “truly crossed the line.” The interview came amid growing speculation that Washington might seek to expand the role of US Forces Korea in countering the growing regional influence of China, a key
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
RSS