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AFP / Leo Malafaia

Black tide in Brazil

Thursday 14 November 2019

The oil first appeared on the beaches of Brazil’s Paraiba state at the end of August. Since then, it has surfaced in nine states in the northeast, soiling pristine beaches, reefs, mangroves and wildlife in what is proving to be the country’s worst oil spill.

The culprit is still not known, although a Greek-flagged tanker is suspected of causing the catastrophe. To get photos of the disaster, which was affecting areas far from state capitals where most of the press is based, AFP’s Rio de Janeiro bureau found talented local photographers. Here are some of their stories.

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  • AFP
  • AFP / Gerard Malie
  • AFP / Francoise Chaptal
  • AFP / Francoise Chaptal
  • AFP / Gerard Malie
  • AFP / Gerard Malie
  • AFP / John Macdougall
  • AFP / Johannes Eisele
  • AFP / Tobias Schwarz

Before, during and after the fall of Berlin Wall

Yana Dlugy Saturday 9 November 2019

To mark the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which changed the face of Europe and the world, AFP blogs bring you three tales -- before, during and after that shining moment in history.

Sabine Nickel, the secretary in AFP's East Berlin bureau who went on to work in the office of the re-unified capital and retired only last year, reminisces on what life was like behind the Iron Curtain.

Richard Ingham takes the reader on a tour of the night the wall fell, with the shock, confusion and sheer luck that helped make it such a poignant, momentous occasion.

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AFP / Francoise Chaptal

Stuck at home with the kids as History rushes by

Sabine Nickel Friday 8 November 2019

“It was a somewhat surreal scene at our house,” writes Sabine Nickel, who worked as a secretary for AFP’s East Berlin bureau since the mid 1980s and retired last year, of the night the Berlin Wall fell. “History was happening a few kilometers away, but we couldn’t go. The kids were asleep and there was no question of leaving them alone in the house to go take a tour of West Berlin…”

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AFP / John Macdougall

Let them come to Berlin

Deborah Cole Wednesday 6 November 2019

"1920s Paris, 1970s New York, 1990s Berlin. Is it always clear to people that they're living through a golden age?" writes Deborah Cole, who has been reporting from Berlin since the 1990s.

"For me at least, when I first arrived in the German capital a quarter century ago, I worried I'd already missed the party. Little did I know the band was just warming up."

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AFP / Gerard Malie

When the Berlin Wall came tumbling down

Richard Ingham Tuesday 5 November 2019

"A brittle cold gripped the air, and the ink-black sky was dusted with stars. Unlit and pot-holed, the streets of Mitte, the heart of East Berlin, were treacherous to walk on. Ghosts seemed all around me," writes Richard Ingham of the night the Berlin Wall fell. "Blackened buildings still bore the scars of shelling in 1945. A few hundred metres away, the remains of Hitler’s bunker lay entombed in the Death Strip – the no-man’s-land of the Berlin Wall. Everything was grey and menacing, and with the leaden feel of eternity."

"Within hours, all this would change.  It was the evening of November 9 1989, and the world was about to be transformed."

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