Ever Given, Ship that Blocked Suez Canal in March, Crosses Canal Again

Ever Given, one of the world's largest container ships, is seen after sailing through Suez Canal in Ismailia, Egypt August 20, 2021. (Suez Canal Authority/Handout via Reuters)
Ever Given, one of the world's largest container ships, is seen after sailing through Suez Canal in Ismailia, Egypt August 20, 2021. (Suez Canal Authority/Handout via Reuters)
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Ever Given, Ship that Blocked Suez Canal in March, Crosses Canal Again

Ever Given, one of the world's largest container ships, is seen after sailing through Suez Canal in Ismailia, Egypt August 20, 2021. (Suez Canal Authority/Handout via Reuters)
Ever Given, one of the world's largest container ships, is seen after sailing through Suez Canal in Ismailia, Egypt August 20, 2021. (Suez Canal Authority/Handout via Reuters)

The giant container ship Ever Given, which blocked the Suez Canal for six days in March, crossed the waterway on Friday for the first time since it left Egypt after the incident.

The ship, en route from the United Kingdom to China, crossed the canal among a convoy of 26 vessels sailing from the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea, the Suez Canal Authority (SCA) said in a statement. Another 36 ships crossed the waterway from the south.

A group of SCA senior pilots and two tugboats escorted the Ever Given throughout its journey through the canal, the authority said in a statement.

The vessel, one of the world's largest container ships, became jammed across the canal in high winds on March 23, halting traffic in both directions and disrupting global trade.

Once it was dislodged, the 400-meter (1,312-foot) vessel left Egypt on July 7, 106 days after becoming wedged across a southern section of the waterway.

Egypt released the Ever Given after protracted negotiations and an undisclosed settlement reached between the SCA and the ship's owners and insurers. It arrived in the Dutch port of Rotterdam on July 29 before heading to Felixstowe, England.

Roughly 15% of world shipping traffic transits the Suez Canal, the shortest shipping route between Europe and Asia.

Friday's voyage through the canal was the Ever Given's 22nd in the waterway.

Shipping trafficking websites Marinetraffic.com and Vesselfinder.com showed the ship in the Red Sea after crossing the canal‮.



French National Detained in Tunisia on Breach of State Security Charges

Security forces in the streets of Tunisia’s capital, Tunis (AFP)
Security forces in the streets of Tunisia’s capital, Tunis (AFP)
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French National Detained in Tunisia on Breach of State Security Charges

Security forces in the streets of Tunisia’s capital, Tunis (AFP)
Security forces in the streets of Tunisia’s capital, Tunis (AFP)

 

French PhD student Victor Dupont was detained in Tunisia on breach of state security charges 12 days ago, and French authorities are trying to negotiate his release, the director of his research lab, Vincent Geisser, said.
Dupont, 27, was arrested just before midday on Oct. 19 at his home in a suburb of Tunis along with three friends visiting from France, according to one of the friends, Edouard Matalon, a Paris-based librarian.
Matalon was released the same day after questioning, according to Reuters.
“This is an attack on academic freedom,” said Geisser, director of the French Institute of Research and Study on the Arab and Islamic Worlds at Aix-Marseille University.
The Tunisian authorities were not immediately available for comment. The French ministry of foreign affairs did not reply to a request for comment.
But several Tunisian lawyers linked Dupont’s arrest to the PhD he started in 2022, and which looks at the socio-economic and life trajectories of those who took part in social movements of the 2011 revolution that toppled President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali.