Today’s buccaneers don’t bother to hoist the Jolly Roger to let you know they’re on their way – they attack with no warning, often arriving at night and in speedboats. So serious a problem is it that a Regional Piracy Centre, based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – one of the worst-affected areas – was created in 1992. According to the International Maritime Bureau, piracy attacks worldwide have almost doubled in recent years, from 107 incidents in 1991 to 202 in 1998, with losses now running at pounds 125m a year. n
‘Seeing the Unseen’, Michael Hoppen Gallery, 3 Jubilee Place, London SW3, 9 July to 28 August (0171-352 3649). Piracy is the street crime of the high seas and it is on the increase. During the rest of his long career his cameras captured everything from Pacific H-bomb tests to the underwater investigations of Jacques Cousteau. He overreached himself only once, in 1976, when he went on an expedition co-sponsored by The New York Times, to find the Loch Ness monster He died in 1990, at MIT.

By matching the frequency of the strobe light’s flashing to the speed of the engine, the rotors appeared to be stationary, a discovery crucial to high-speed photography. The 1959 image is the work of Dr Harold Eugene Edgerton, or the Doc, who revolutionised photography with a string of inventions. Born in Fermont, Nebraska in 1903, as a boy he learnt about photography from his uncle, and set up a darkroom in his parents’ kitchen. After graduating, he moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he studied the whirling rotors of an engine with a stroboscope. High-speed photography

Caught in an instant: three balloons, just after they have been pierced by .22 calibre bullet, travelling at a speed of 1,600ft per second.

Its stunning 6km crescent beach is regularly topped up with imported Moroccan sand.. Benidorm, Spain

Forty years ago the Costa Blanca resort was a small fishing village. Today, in high summer, it is one the Med’s main clubbing destinations, a populist, cheaper alternative to nearby Ibiza. It looks like I’d set the picture up, but I was just lucky to capture the moment.”. We’d just finished eating when somebody walked past the window.

The morning light was just right, and when my friend looked up, I clicked the camera. The picture, entitled ‘Park Town’ after the Oxford suburb in which it was taken, shows two friends of the photographer in their basement flat. “They had recently married,” recalls Symonds, “and I was visiting them for breakfast. Please send your photographs (in either colour or black and white, preferably in print form) to Readers’ Lives, The Independent Saturday Magazine, One Canada Square, Canary Wharf, London E14 5DL Do not send originals as photographs cannot be returned. The winners of Readers’ Lives: the joy of Saturday mornings will be showcased throughout July.
This week’s winnerThe atmospheric photograph, above, was sent in by Jimmy Symonds from Marston, Oxford. There’s also room for stand- up bars and, astonishingly, a suggestion that a disco could be incorporated into the wider lower deck.

In theory, the A3XX will be heading out to the airlines in 2005, although Airbus has yet to build a prototype and is still working with 1:35 scale models. To make sure they get what they want, 19 airlines, including Virgin and British Airways, are currently helping Airbus with its enquiries n. Your assignment

Each month we set readers a photographic assignment and offer them the chance to have their picture published on this page The brief for July is Saturday mornings. With another trend being towards all-business-class flights, however, that seems unlikely. Instead, first-class passengers may get their own cabins while the rest of us huddle up.