Troubled Waters

AP PHOTO / GREENPEACE, DAVID SIMS

PROTEST: Greenpeace activists board the Clemenceau to unfurl a banner that reads "Asbestos carrier stay out of India"

For almost 40 years, the aircraft carrier Clemenceau plied the world's seas as the flag bearer of the French navy, deploying off troubled coasts from Djibouti in 1974 to Yugoslavia in 1993. Last week the decommissioned 26,000-ton giant — stripped of guns and under an assumed name — was stalled on what the French had hoped would be its last journey, bound for the world's biggest shipbreaking yards on the beaches of Alang in western India. The ship, which is riddled with potentially toxic asbestos and has already been rejected by Greece and Turkey, made no headway for several days as...

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