Beirut’s Orient Queen was the cities only cruise ship… She offered an escape from the city, a family run floating party boat that was a summer haven for some and a home for the people who worked on board. On August 6th last year she became one of the casualties of the Beirut port explosion in which over 200 people lost their lives, thousands were injured and hundreds of thousands were made homeless in an instant.
Due to the lockdown as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic the world of newsgathering has changed dramatically. Social distancing, quarantines and lack of worldwide travel has meant that we are relying more and more on Zoom, Skype and Facetime for interviews and verified UGC for a good portion of our meaningful content. This is an example of many stories from around the world that we are having to cover from afar.
This piece about the Venezuelan gold trade was commissioned by BBC Digital at the height of the 2019 leadership crisis in the South American country. At the time Mark Lowen was the Turkey correspondent. He and I created this explainer, reporting from Istanbul.
