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The model makers in Madagascar bring history’s long-lost ships back to life

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ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar (AP) — A French trading ship that sank in the 17th century with treasure onboard is being brought back to life in a workshop in Madagascar with every stroke of Rafah Ralahy’s small wood sander.

Ralahy, eyes sparkling behind his glasses, has learned in 30 years as a craftsman at the Le Village model ship making company that recreating history in miniature form can’t be rushed. It’ll take time to get the shape of the hull just right on this model, to get it just as it was on the 1,000-ton original.

The ship in question was called the Soleil d’Orient — the Eastern Sun — and it was one of the best in the French East India company. It sank in 1681 while carrying ambassadors and treasure sent by the King of Siam (now Thailand) to King Louis XIV of France. Anyone wanting an exact wooden replica from Le Village, albeit a few feet long, can get it for just over $2,500. That excludes the shipping costs.

“My job is to be as faithful as possible to the plan,” said 50-year-old Ralahy, referring to copies of the ships’ original building plans that Le Village acquires from maritime museums or other sources. “At each stage we check so that the model we create is identical to the ship designed centuries ago.”

Le Village has been making models of history’s most famous vessels since 1993 and sending them to collectors across the world, some of them eminent. Prince Albert of Monaco has several models displayed in his palace, said Le Village co-owner Grégory Postel. The Spanish royal family also own Le Village creations. Pope Francis was gifted a model by Madagascar President Andry Rajoelina.

Those royal customers are looking for a model ship “that resembles what their ancestors knew,” said Postel, championing the company’s attention to historic detail. Some of the high-end models sell for a princely sum of $10,000. Collectors with as much passion but less means can find something for around $150.

Le Village has dozens of ships available for order, from celebrated to infamous to ill-fated. Some recently were shown at an exhibition in Venice, Italy, including one of the company’s showpieces, the British ship HMS Bounty that is renowned for a mutiny by its disgruntled crew. A model of perhaps the most famous ship ever, the Titanic, is of course available.

Le Village’s staff of more than two dozen model makers work in nine dusty workshops on the outskirts of the Madagascar capital of Antananarivo. Like Ralahy, many of them have been here for more than 20 years, crafting a reputation for an unusual company.

Madagascar has hardly any shipbuilding tradition despite being the world’s fourth largest island. So, Le Village’s own story is one of endeavor.

It was started by Frenchman Hervé Scrive, who arrived in Madagascar off the east coast of Africa with a passion. He sold it after 20 years to a family, but it hit choppy waters during the COVID-19 pandemic as Madagascar — already struggling with high levels of poverty — sank into a deep economic recession.

Postel, his wife and another French couple bought it last year with the aim of bringing it out of financial trouble and, hopefully, expanding. Postel said they want to start a woodworking school to spread the craft on the island and create opportunities for others. They’d also like to build a maritime museum of their own.

Ralahy, a house painter as a young man before finding another use for his nimble hands, sands the rough wood that will become the outer hull of the Soleil d’Orient model he’s started. Weeks of intricate work lie ahead for the team of crafters and some models take more than 1,000 hours of work. But the miniature sails will be hoisted on a new Soleil d’Orient nearly 350 years after tragedy befell the original and she sank with no survivors, sending her treasure to the ocean bottom.

Each model passes through the different workshops and through the hands of different specialists. Husbands and wives work together at Le Village, as do other members of the same families. It’s a tight-knit team.

In another room, four women who craft and attach the tiny ropes, sails and other finishing touches, are working with a sense of urgency on one model. This one is nearing completion and has already been paid for.

“It’s a race,” said Alexandria Mandimbiherimamisoa as she gets mini flags ready to add to the ship. “We have to send the boat to its buyer in a week.”

Her husband, Tovo-Hery Andrianarivo, also works at Le Village, his fingernails blackened from a misplaced hammer blow or two over the years, an occupational hazard. He spoke of their collective pride when they see how far some of their models have traveled.

Andrianarivo once watched a documentary on the recreation of a life-size version of the Hermione, an 18th-century frigate that carried French General Lafayette to the American War of Independence. It was rebuilt and launched again in 2014 to much fanfare.

“Behind the museum curator who was speaking, there was our model,” Andrianarivo said. “The feeling I felt that day was incredible.”

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For more news on Africa and development: https://apnews.com/hub/africa-pulse

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The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Gates Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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Flames remain hot in pre-season, beat Canucks 4-2

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CALGARY – Ryan Lomberg and Brayden Pachal each had a goal and assist on Saturday night to lead the Calgary Flames to a 4-2 victory over the Vancouver Canucks in NHL pre-season action.

Blake Coleman and Adam Klapka also scored for Calgary, which is 4-0-1 through five games.

Jonathan Lekkerimaki and Aatu Ratyu were the marksmen for Vancouver, which is 2-2 in exhibition play.

Dan Vladar, who stopped 17 of 19 shots in 40 minutes of action, got the win. Devin Cooley made nine stops in relief.

Artus Silovs, beaten four times on 24 shots, gave way to Nikita Tolopilo to start the third. Tolopilo had eight saves.

Calgary opened the scoring at 4:23 when Pachal’s rising wrist shot from the blue line through a maze of bodies eluded Silovs, who never saw it.

The Flames surged in front 2-0 three minutes later when Lomberg corralled a MacKenzie Weegar rebound in the slot and fired a shot just inside the goalpost.

Lomberg, 29, who broke into the NHL as a Flame in 2017-18, re-signed in the off-season in Calgary as a free agent after four years with the Florida Panthers, which was capped off by winning the Stanley Cup.

Vancouver got on the scoreboard at 8:35 of the second on a fortuitous bounce.

Lekkerimaki’s shot from the slot deflected off Flames defenceman Artem Grushnikov, went high into the air, and with seemingly nobody aware of where the puck went, it toppled over Vladar and landed in the Calgary net.

Since being drafted by Vancouver in the first round, in 2022, Lekkerimaki has spent the past two seasons in his native Sweden.

This will be the 20-year-old’s first season in North America and with three points (1 goal, 2 assists) in three games in the pre-season, he’s making a push for a job with the Canucks.

One of the players he is competing against is Raty, who after Calgary had taken a 3-1 lead, again got the Canucks back within one on a perfect shot after being set up on a 2-on-1 by Conor Garland.

Raty, a second-round pick in 2021, was acquired from the New York Islanders in the Bo Horvat trade. He’s spent most of the past two seasons in the AHL.

The Flames restored their two-goal cushion later in the second with Klapka firing a shot past Silovs for his third goal in as many pre-season games.

Klapka, who stands 6-foot-8, is looking to make the team’s fourth line. The 24-year-old has shown some offensive pop with three goals in as many pre-season games.

His physicality was also on display Saturday, throwing an open-ice hit in the first period on Nils Aman that sent the Canucks forward flying. In the third, a heavy hit on Akito Hirose send the defenceman careening into the sideboards. Hirose had to be helped off the ice.

UNEXPECTED OFFENCE

Known more for his physicality, Pachal has never had a multi-point game in his 62 career NHL regular-season games. The 24-year-old was in his fifth season with the Vegas Golden Knights organization when he was claimed off waivers by Calgary last February.

HUBERDEAU-MANTHA COMBO

Left-winger Jonathan Huberdeau played in his second pre-season game for Calgary and has been the case throughout camp, the right-winger was veteran Anthony Mantha, who the Flames signed to a one-year deal as a free agent. On this night, Yegor Sharangovich was at centre. In the first game, the two were centred by Martin Pospisil.

UP NEXT

Canucks: Visit the Edmonton Oilers on Monday.

Flames: Host the Seattle Kraken on Monday.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 28, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



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Hajrullahu kicks record-tying eight FGs to lead Argos past Alouettes 37-31

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TORONTO – Lirim Hajrullahu gave the Montreal Alouettes the boot Saturday night.

Hajrullahu kicked a CFL record-tying eight field goals to lift the Toronto Argonauts to a 37-31 win over the Montreal Alouettes.

“I did not know eight was the record,” Hajrullahu said. “We knew this was a tough opponent and we wanted to come out and get that (win).

“The East is heating up and so are we.”

Hajrullahu’s 27-yard field goal — his club record-tying seventh — at 12:43 of the fourth put Toronto ahead 34-31. Montreal took over at its 34-yard line with 2:10 remaining but turned the ball over on downs at its 39-yard line with 1:24 to play before an announced BMO Field gathering of 14,856.

That set up Hajrullahu’s 37-yard kick at 14:11 that put Toronto up 37-31. It tied the CFL record set in 1984 by Dave Ridgway and later tied by Mark McLoughlin and Paul Osbaldiston (both in 1996).

Montreal began its final possession at midfield but Tyshon Blackburn’s interception with 22 seconds remaining ended the threat and cementing the win for Toronto.

Toronto (8-7) earned its second win in three contests this season against Montreal (11-3-1). The Alouettes clinched first in the East — and home field for the division final — with the Ottawa Redblacks’ 29-16 road loss to the Saskatchewan Roughriders earlier Saturday.

But Montreal linebacker Darnell Sankey said that was the furthest thing from the Alouettes’ mind on Saturday.

“We were going out there to win a football game,” said Sankey, who had six tackles and a sack. “We’re not going to use that as an excuse, we didn’t come out and play our best game, for whatever reason.

“Props to Toronto … they came out and executed their game plan better than we did. They were the better team tonight.”

Toronto moved to within a point of second-place Ottawa (8-6-1) in the East Division and four points ahead of fourth-place Hamilton (6-9). The Argos host the Redblacks on Oct. 19.

“Lirim was huge, you’ve got to make those kicks,” said Toronto head coach Ryan Dinwiddie. “(But) we’ve got to finish in the red zone.

“We can’t have eight field goals. I know it tied a record but I’d settle for one to score some touchdowns.”

Toronto’s offence rolled up 517 net yards, including 234 yards rushing. Ka’Deem Carey led the way with 90 yards and a touchdown on 13 carries while adding three catches for 49 yards.

“This (win) is huge,” Carey said. “This could turn our season around and I’m going to make sure it turns our season around.”

Makai Polk had five receptions for a game-high 103 yards for Toronto. Starter Chad Kelly was 19-of-30 passing for 287 yards and an interception.

“Disappointing we didn’t run the ball well enough on second down,” Dinwiddie said. “We knew Montreal would let us run on first down, they wanted to get us in that second-and-five, do you pass it or do you run it?

“We didn’t move the chains as much as I wanted on second down but I have to go look at it. We didn’t play a great football game, we played good enough to win but we’ve got to continue to get better.”

Montreal came in allowing a CFL-low 19.6 offensive points per game but was ranked eighth against the run (112.1 yards per game). Toronto had the CFL’s second-ranked ground attack (118.4 yards per game).

Alouettes’ quarterback Cody Fajardo completed 20-of-29 passes for 225 yards with two touchdowns and an interception. Cole Spieker recorded three catches for 99 yards and a TD.

Montreal made it 31-31 on Dominque Davis’s one-yard TD run at 8:45 of the fourth, then Fajardo’s pass to Tyler Snead for the two-point convert. Hajrullahu’s 35-yard field goal at 3:15 had put Toronto ahead 31-23.

Deonta McMahon scored Toronto’s other touchdown. Hajrullahu also had a convert.

James Letcher Jr. and Walter Fletcher had Montreal’s other touchdowns. Jose Maltos added three converts and two singles.

Hajrullahu’s 49-yard field goal to end the half made it 22-22 and capped a wild finish to the second. Letcher’s 100-yard punt-return TD at 14:42 put Montreal ahead 22-19 after Fajardo’s 35-yard TD pass to Spieker at 13:27, and Maltos’ ensuing 84-yard kickoff single cut Toronto’s lead to 19-15.

Toronto dominated the opening half, rushing for 155 yards and holding the ball for more than 20 minutes. However, it managed just one touchdown and five times had to settle for field goals.

Carey had Toronto’s lone TD of the half on a five-yard run at 10:00 that put the Argos ahead 19-7. It capped a solid seven-play, 90-yard march.

Fajardo put Montreal ahead 7-3 with a 10-yard TD strike to Fletcher at 6:30. It was set up by Dionte Ruffin’s 27-yard interception return to Toronto’s 10-yard line in a light drizzle.

UP NEXT

Alouettes: Bye week.

Argonauts: Bye week.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 28, 2024.

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She defended ‘El Chapo.’ Now this lawyer is using her narco-fame to launch a music career

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MEXICO CITY (AP) — Riding in a black SUV with tinted windows, lawyer Mariel Colón rolls up to the gates of a remote mansion, strolling past a security guard side-by-side with Emma Coronel, the wife of notorious drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.

Sporting suits and sunglasses, the pair stride into a dimly lit room full of slickly dressed men smoking cigars.

All to the roar of trumpets.

The scene is from “La Señora,” the latest music video from Colón, who spent several years working as a defense lawyer for Guzmán while he faced trial in a U.S. court. Now, at a time when regional Mexican music is becoming a global phenomenon, the 31-year-old is leveraging her association with the former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel to launch her music career under the stage name of “Mariel La Abogada” (Mariel, the Lawyer).

“La Señora” features — and pays tribute to — Guzmán’s wife, who was released from prison last year and has struggled to find work. It paved the way for the two to model together last weekend during Milan Fashion Week, raising eyebrows in Italy and beyond.

“(My work) opens doors for me because of the morbid, because of people’s curiosity … They want to understand this,” Colón told The Associated Press. “I’ve always told people that Mariel is a singer who became a lawyer.”

The Puerto Rican daughter of a music director grew up listening to Mexican ballads, loving the brokenhearted passion infused in the music. She always wanted to be a singer, but her family pushed her to pursue a law degree.

She began working for Guzmán’s defense team in 2018 after graduating from law school in the U.S. and stumbling upon a Craigslist ad seeking a part-time paralegal to help prepare a Spanish-speaking client for trial.

It was only later that she learned she would be working with Guzmán, taking him and Coronel as clients full time. She saw it as a “great opportunity professionally” and said she wasn’t easily intimidated.

Once among the most wanted men in the world, Guzmán led his Sinaloa Cartel in a bloody war for control of the international drug trade, gaining a cinematic level of notoriety for his dramatic prison escapes before his extradition to the U.S. in 2017. Now his sons, known as “Los Chapitos,” are locked in a deadly power struggle with another faction of the cartel, leaving mutilated bodies around the state capital.

“(People ask) how I can do this job, that I’m part of the mafia, how can I sleep at night?” Colón said. “I don’t care what they say about me. I sleep very well at night.”

Colón is one of few people who maintain regular contact with Guzmán. She visits him three times a month in the maximum security prison in Colorado where he’s serving a life sentence. She declined to discuss details of Guzmán’s cases, citing attorney-client privilege.

Seeking to build a rapport, Colón sings to Guzmán and other clients, who have included other Mexican drug traffickers and, for a brief time, Jeffrey Epstein, who killed himself in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.

Colón serenades Guzmán with Mexican classics from bands including Los Alegres del Barranco and Tucanes de Tijuana. To this day, she said, he’s among the first to hear her new music.

“Whatever genre, anything that was coming out that I liked, I would sing it to him because he doesn’t have a radio,” she said.

Her musical career began little more than a year ago, when she released her first video, “La Abogada,” which features Colón dressed in a pink suit, crooning to law enforcement from a courtroom. Like much of the genre, her music is diverse, ranging from percussion-heavy banda to character-focused ballads known as corridos.

“La Señora” features a table sprinkled with diamonds, Guzmán’s wife astride a trotting horse and strolling beside a pool.

Colón said the song was based on Coronel’s life, sending a message of redemption and second chances. It was also a way to offer the 35-year-old work, a condition of her probation.

Coronel, a former beauty queen, was released from prison last year after completing her three-year sentence for drug trafficking and money laundering in relation to her husband’s drug empire. Coronel declined to be interviewed.

“A small waist and beautiful eyes. A brain for business and a strong voice for the bad boys. She only shows her affectionate side to El Chaparrito,” Colón belts out in her ballad. “El Chaparrito,” meaning “the little shorty,” plays with Guzmán’s nickname.

Colón’s musical rise coincides with a relative golden age of Mexican music, which grew 400% worldwide over the last five years on Spotify. In 2023, Mexican artist Peso Pluma bested Taylor Swift as the most streamed artist on YouTube.

While corridos have dominated for more than a century, young artists have filled stadiums by twisting the style on its head, mixing classic ballads with trap in corridos tumbados.

But it also cuts to the heart of a larger debate: Does the music capture the realities facing many Mexicans or does it glorify the narco-violence long plaguing the Latin American nation?

Narco culture has long been part of corridos, with many singers idealizing traffickers as “an aspirational figure going against the system,” said Rafael Saldívar, a researcher at the Autonomous University of Baja California.

“They’re cultural expressions speaking to the realities of the country,” Saldívar said. But “in a way they glorify these criminals, or do so in a way where some feel it’s pushing this kind of lifestyle.”

A classic example: king of corridos Chalino Sánchez used the violence around him in Sinaloa to spin lyrics while also calling out the “Sinaloa gang” for torturing and killing innocents. He was shot dead at a performance in the state’s capital in 1992.

Last year, Peso Pluma – who paid homage to Guzmán in songs – was forced to cancel a show in Tijuana after the 25-year-old received threats from a rival of the Sinaloa Cartel that if he came it “would be your last performance.”

Later, Tijuana banned the performance of narco ballads altogether to protect “the eyes and ears” of youths as it tries to contain violence. Local authorities in northern states previously banned musicians singing narcocorridos.

Colón, who hasn’t gone so far as to glorify arms or drugs, is quick to defend narcocorridos.

“There’s a reason why Netflix did the ‘Narcos’ show, it’s because there’s an audience for it. It intrigues people,” she said. “That doesn’t mean they’re applauding or celebrating what this person did, but they do have a sort of admiration for this person or this person’s life. Not everything is violence. These people have hearts, they have families.”

While Colón plans to put out her first record in December, Coronel has leveraged “La Señora” to launch her career as a model and social media influencer.

April Black Diamond, the designer who asked Coronel and Colón to model in a side event during Milan Fashion Week, said her choice was met with “shock.”

“People evolve. My platform isn’t about judgment but about showing different dimensions of women, their strength, and resilience,” she wrote in a statement. The next day, photos of Coronel in one of the designer’s dresses appeared plastered on a billboard in New York’s Times Square.

On Wednesday, Italy’s National Fashion Chamber issued an “urgent” press release saying the show wasn’t affiliated with official fashion week events and that brands need to follow its code of ethics.

Meanwhile, eyes on Colón and Coronel’s video continue to grow, clocking around 750,000 views on YouTube.

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