World
New Delhi got a makeover for the G20 summit. The city's poor say they were simply erased
NEW DELHI, Sept 4 (AP/UNB) — New Delhi's crowded streets have been resurfaced. Streetlights are illuminating once dark sidewalks. City buildings and walls are painted with bright murals and graffiti. Planted flowers are everywhere.
Many of the city’s poor say they were simply erased, much like the stray dogs and monkeys that have been removed from some neighborhoods, as India's capital got its makeover ahead of this week's summit of the Group of 20 nations.
Read: Biden to attend next month's G-20 summit in New Delhi
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government hopes the elaborate effort to make New Delhi sparkle — a “beautification project” with a price tag of $120 million — will help showcase the world’s most populous nation’s cultural prowess and strengthen its position on the global stage.
But for many street vendors and those crammed into New Delhi's shantytowns, the makeover has meant displacement and loss of livelihood, raising questions about the government's policies on dealing with poverty. In a city of more than 20 million people, the 2011 census had the homeless at 47,000 but activists say that was a vast underestimate and that the real number is at least 150,000.
Since January, hundreds of houses and roadside stalls have been demolished, displacing thousands of people. Dozens of shantytowns were raised to the ground, with many residents getting eviction notices only a short while before the demolitions got underway.
Read: Bangladesh’s New Delhi mission pays homage to Bangabandhu
Authorities say the demolitions were carried out against “illegal encroachers,” but right activists and those evicted question the policy and allege that it has pushed thousands more into homelessness.
Similar demolitions have also been carried out in other Indian cities like Mumbai and Kolkata that have hosted various G20 events leading up to this weekend's summit.
Activists say it was more than just a case of out of sight, out of mind.
Abdul Shakeel, with the activist group Basti Suraksha Manch, or Save Colony Forum, says that “in the name of beautification, the urban poor’s lives are destroyed.”
Read:Bangladesh-India Friendship Pipeline to vastly improve transport of diesel: New Delhi
“The money used for G20 is taxpayers' money. Everyone pays the tax. Same money is being used to evict and displace them,” he said. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
The two-day global summit will take place at the newly constructed Bharat Mandapam building, a sprawling exhibition center in the heart of New Delhi near the landmark India Gate monument — and scores of world leaders are expected to attend. The G20 includes the world’s 19 wealthiest countries plus the European Union. India currently holds its presidency, which rotates annually among the members.
In July, a report by the Concerned Citizens Collective, a rights activist group, found that the preparations for the G20 summit resulted in the displacement of nearly 300,000 people, particularly from the neighborhoods that foreign leaders and diplomats will visit during various meetings.
At least 25 shantytowns and multiple night shelters for the homeless were razed to the ground and turned into parks, the report said, adding that the government failed to provide alternative shelters or places for the newly homeless.
Last month, Indian police intervened to stop a meeting of prominent activists, academics and politicians critical of Modi and his government’s role in hosting the G20 summit and questioning whose interests the summit would benefit.
“I can see the homeless on the streets ... and now the homeless are not allowed to live on the streets either,” said Rekha Devi, a New Delhi resident who attended the Aug. 20 gathering.
Devi, whose home was demolished in one of the drives, said authorities refused to consider documents she showed as proof that her family had lived in the same house for nearly 100 years.
“Everyone is behaving as if they are blind," Devi said. "In the name of the G20 event, the farmers, workers and the poor are suffering.”
Read: 53rd DG level border talks begin in New Delhi
Home to 1.4 billion people, India’s struggle to end poverty remains daunting, even though a recent government report said that nearly 135 million — almost 10% of the country’s population — moved out of so-called multidimensional poverty between 2016 and 2021. The concept takes into consideration not just monetary poverty but also how lack of education, infrastructure and services affect a person’s quality of life.
Indian authorities have been criticized in the past for clearing away homeless encampments and shantytowns ahead of major events.
In 2020, the government hastily erected a half-kilometer (1,640-foot) brick wall in the state of Gujarat ahead of a visit by then-President Donald Trump, with critics saying it was built to block the view of a slum area inhabited by more than 2,000 people. Similar demolitions were also carried out during the 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi.
Some street vendors say they are helpless, stuck between sacrificing their livelihoods for India’s pride and wanting to earn a living.
Shankar Lal, who sells chickpea curry with fried flatbread, said authorities told him three months ago to move away. These days, the only time he gets to open his stall along a busy New Delhi road near the G20 summit venue is on Sundays, when police pay less attention to the street vendors.
It's not enough to eke out a living.
“These are government rules, and we’ll do what we are told," Lal said. "The government doesn’t know whether we are dying of hunger or not.”
Southeast Asian leaders are besieged by thorny issues as they hold an ASEAN summit without Biden
Southeast Asian leaders led by Indonesian host President Joko Widodo are gathering in their final summit this year, besieged by divisive issues with no solutions in sight: Myanmar’s deadly civil strife, new flare-ups in the disputed South China Sea, and the longstanding United States-China rivalry.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations meetings will open Tuesday in the Indonesian capital Jakarta under tight security. The absence of U.S. President Joe Biden, who typically attends, adds to the already somber backdrop of the 10-state bloc’s traditional show of unity and group handshakes.
After discussions Tuesday, the ASEAN heads of state would meet Asian and Western counterparts from Wednesday to Thursday, providing a wider venue that the U.S. and China, and their allies, have used for wide-ranging talks on free trade, climate change and global security. It has also become a battleground for their rivalries.
Chinese Premier Li Qiang was set to join the meetings, including the 18-member East Asia Summit. There, he would meet U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris — who will fly in lieu of Biden — and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
While skipping ASEAN, Biden will fly to Asia for the G20 summit in India, then visit Vietnam to elevate ties. Washington says Biden was not relegating the bloc to a lower rung of geopolitical priorities and cited the U.S. president’s effort to deepen America’s engagement with the region.
READ: President to lead Bangladesh contingent at ASEAN Summit
"It's hard to look at what we’ve done as an administration, since the very beginning, and come away with a conclusion that we are somehow not interested in the Indo-Pacific or that we are deprioritizing the Southeast Asia nations and those relationships,” John Kirby, a national security spokesperson, said at a news briefing Friday in Washington.
In November, Biden attended the ASEAN summit meetings in Cambodia and in May 2022 hosted eight of the bloc’s leaders at the White House to demonstrate his administration’s commitment to their region while dealing with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The Biden administration has also been strengthening an arc of security alliances in the Indo-Pacific, including in Southeast Asia, alarming China.
Marty Natalegawa, a respected former foreign minister of Indonesia, expressed disappointment over Biden’s non-appearance, but said such red flags were more alarmingly emblematic of ASEAN’s declining relevance.
READ: ASEAN’s collective market holds significant promise for Bangladesh’s economic growth: Momen
"The absence of the U.S. president, while it is disappointing and symbolically significant, is for me the least of the worry because what’s more worrisome actually is the more fundamental structural tendency for ASEAN to become less and less prominent,” Natalegawa told The Associated Press in an interview.
Founded in 1967 in the Cold War era, ASEAN has a principle of non-interference in each member state’s domestic affairs. It also decides by consensus, meaning even one member can shoot down any unfavorable decision or proposal.
Those bedrock rules have attracted a starkly diverse membership, ranging from nascent democracies to conservative monarchies, but have also restrained the bloc from taking punitive actions against state-sanctioned atrocities.
The bloc currently groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
Natalegawa said ASEAN's failure to effectively rein in Myanmar’s military government from committing human rights atrocities and its “deafening silence” when a Chinese coast guard ship recently used a water cannon to block a Philippine supply boat in the disputed South China Sea underscore why the group’s aspiration to be in the center of Asian diplomacy has been questioned. Member states have turned to either the U.S. or China for security, he said.
"Absenteeism by ASEAN is leading to unmet needs, and those needs are being met elsewhere,” he said.
READ: Momen courts ASEAN for dialogue partner status to Bangladesh
Myanmar's civil strife, which has dragged on for more than two years after the army ousted the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi, and the South China Sea disputes were again expected to overshadow the Jakarta summit agenda, as in previous years. Indonesia tried to swing the focus to boosting regional economies with an upbeat theme this year — “ASEAN Matters: Epicentrum of Growth” — but the geopolitical and security issues have continued to pester and spark diplomatic fallouts.
The European Union has warned that its relations with ASEAN may be affected if it has to deal with Myanmar in any leadership role. Following the EU warning, Myanmar’s military-led government, which has not been recognized by — but remains a member of — ASEAN, gave notice that it may not be able to chair the regional bloc as scheduled in 2026, two Southeast Asian diplomats told the AP.
ASEAN leaders would have to decide in Jakarta whether to ask the Philippines to replace Myanmar as host for that year, said the diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of a lack of authority to publicly discuss the issues.
Myanmar could also not assume a three-year role starting next year as coordinator of ASEAN-EU relations, according to the two diplomats.
Myanmar's generals and their appointees have been barred from attending ASEAN’s leaders and foreign ministerial meetings, including this week’s summit meetings, after the military government failed to fully comply with a five-point peace plan that called for an immediate end to violence and the start of dialogue between contending parties, including Suu Kyi and other officials, who have been locked up in jail since they were overthrown.
About 4,000 people have been killed and more than 24,400 people arrested since the army takeover in Myanmar, according to the advocacy group Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.
In a crucial reform that would allow ASEAN to respond faster and prevent such crises from degenerating into deadly disasters, its member states have discussed proposed rules that would allow the group to make a decision even in the absence of consensus from all member states, one of the two diplomats said.
Dinna Prapto Raharja, a Jakarta-based analyst and professor on international relations, said ASEAN's credibility is on the line if the Myanmar crisis drags on. While the bloc has no conflict-resolution mechanism for such domestic strife, it should be flexible enough to harness its clout and connections to help address such problems.
“ASEAN continues to say that it's so difficult, it's so complex,” she said. But, “as time goes by, all these opportunities simply evaporate.”
Russia attacks a Ukrainian port before key grain deal talks between Putin and Turkey's president
Two people were hospitalized following a 3½-hour Russian drone barrage on a port in Ukraine’s Odesa region on Sunday, officials said.
The attack on the Reni seaport comes a day before Russian President Vladimir Putin is due to meet with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan to discuss the resumption of food shipments from Ukraine under a Black Sea grain agreement that Moscow broke off from in July.
Russian forces fired 25 Iranian-made Shahed drones along the Danube River in the early hours of Sunday, 22 of which were shot down by air defenses, the Ukrainian air force said on Telegram.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, described the assault as part of a Russian drive “to provoke a food crisis and hunger in the world.”
Read: Putin, Erdogan set to meet amid efforts to repair Ukraine grain deal
Russia's Defense Ministry said in a statement that the attack was aimed at fuel storage facilities used to supply military equipment.
Putin and Erdogan’s long-awaited meeting is due to take place in Sochi on Russia’s southwest coast on Monday.
Turkish officials have confirmed that the pair will discuss renewing the Black Sea grain initiative, which the Kremlin pulled out of six weeks ago.
The deal — brokered by the United Nations and Turkey in July 2022 — had allowed nearly 33 million metric tons (36 million tons) of grain and other commodities to leave three Ukrainian ports safely despite Russia’s war.
Read: Drones target 6 regions in biggest attack on Russia since troops sent to Ukraine, officials say
However, Russia broke away from the agreement after claiming that a parallel deal promising to remove obstacles to Russian exports of food and fertilizer hadn’t been honored.
Moscow complained that restrictions on shipping and insurance hampered its agricultural trade, even though it has shipped record amounts of wheat since last year.
The Sochi summit follows talks between the Russian and Turkish foreign ministers on Thursday, during which Russia handed over a list of actions that the West would have to take in order for Ukraine’s Black Sea exports to resume.
Erdogan has indicated sympathy with Putin’s position. In July, he said Putin had “certain expectations from Western countries” over the Black Sea deal and that it was “crucial for these countries to take action in this regard.”
Elsewhere in Ukraine, two people were killed and two others were wounded during Russian shelling Sunday on the village of Vuhledar in the Donetsk area.
Read: N. Korea's Kim calls for readiness to smash US-led invasion plot, as US trains with South and Japan
Artillery fire hit eight settlements across the region, Ukraine’s National Police wrote on Telegram.
Ukrainian prosecutors also announced Sunday that they had opened a war crimes investigation into the death of a police officer killed by Russian shelling on the town of Seredyna-Buda on Saturday afternoon.
Two other police officers and one civilian were wounded during the attack, which hit Ukraine’s north-eastern Sumy region.
Rival Eritrean groups clash in Israel, leaving dozens hurt in worst confrontation in recent memory
Hundreds of Eritrean government supporters and opponents clashed with each other and with Israeli police Saturday, leaving dozens injured in one of the most violent street confrontations among African asylum seekers and migrants in Tel Aviv in recent memory.
Among those hurt were 30 police officers and three protesters hit by police fire.
Eritreans from both sides faced off with construction lumber, pieces of metal, rocks and at least one axe, tearing through a neighborhood of south Tel Aviv where many asylum seekers live. Protesters smashed shop windows and police cars, and blood spatter was seen on sidewalks. One government supporter was lying in a puddle of blood in a children’s playground.
Israeli police in riot gear shot tear gas, stun grenades and live rounds while officers on horseback tried to control the protesters, who broke through barricades and hurled chunks rocks at the police. Police said officers resorted to live fire when they felt their lives were in danger.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would convene a meeting Sunday to discuss steps against those who participated in the clashes, including deportations. A statement by his office referred to them as “illegal infiltrators.”
The clashes came as Eritrean government supporters marked the 30th anniversary of the current ruler's rise to power. The event was held near the Eritrean embassy in south Tel Aviv. Eritrea has one of the world's worst human rights records. Asylum seekers in Israel and elsewhere say they fear death if they were to return.
Police said Eritrean government supporters and opponents had received permission for separate events Saturday, and had promised to stay away from each other.
At some point, the promises were broken, said Chaim Bublil, a Tel Aviv police commander.
Read: Key Beirut road reopens after rival groups clash overnight
“A decision was made by the government opponents to break through the barriers, to clash with the police, to throw stones, to hit police officers,” Bublil told reporters at the scene.
He said the police had arrested 39 people and confiscated tasers, knives and clubs.
The Magen David Adom rescue service said at least 114 people were hurt, including eight who were in serious condition. The others had moderate or mild injuries. Of those hurt, 30 were police officers, said Bublil.
A spokesperson for Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Hospital said it was treating 11 patients for gunshot wounds. Police said three protesters were wounded by police fire.
By late Saturday afternoon, the clashes had stopped. Police were still rounding up protesters, putting them on buses.
Many of the anti-government protesters wore sky blue shirts designed after Eritrea's 1952 flag, a symbol of opposition to the government of the east African country, while government supporters wore purple shirts with a map of Eritrea.
Eritreans make up the majority of the more than 30,000 African asylum seekers in Israel. They say they fled danger and persecution from a country known as the “North Korea of Africa” with forced lifetime military conscription in slavery-like conditions. Eritrea's government has denounced anti-government protesters as “ asylum scum ” who have marched against similar events in Europe and North America.
Read: Suspected Palestinian shooting attack at West Bank car wash kills 2 Israelis
President Isaias Afwerki, 77, has led Eritrea since 1993, taking power after the country won independence from Ethiopia after a long guerrilla war. There have been no elections and there’s no free media. Exit visas are required for Eritreans to leave the country. Many young people are forced into military service with no end date, human rights groups and United Nations experts say.
In Israel, they face an uncertain future as the state has attempted to deport them. But despite the struggle to stay, in often squalid conditions, many say they enjoy some freedoms they never would have at home — like the right to protest.
Eritrean asylum seekers are often “hunted and harassed” by the Eritrean government and its supporters inside Israel, said Sigal Rozen, from the Tel Aviv-based human rights organization Hotline for Refugees and Migrants.
Read more: Israeli military fire killed Palestinian teen in occupied West Bank, Palestinian health officials say
Events like the one held in Tel Aviv on Saturday are controversial because they raise money for the heavily sanctioned government and are used to pressure Eritreans far from home, said Elizabeth Chyrum, director of the London-based Human Rights Concern — Eritrea.
18 dead in Iraq after bus carrying Shiite pilgrims to Karbala overturns
A bus carrying pilgrims to the Iraqi city of Karbala overturned north of Baghdad on Saturday, killing 18 people, medical officials said.
Millions of believers converge on the city each year for the Shiite pilgrimage of Arbaeen, regarded as the largest annual public gathering in the world. Pilgrims come from various parts of Iraq as well as from Iran and the Gulf countries, with many making their way to Karbala on foot.
Two Iraqi medical officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak to the media said that the bus overturned near the town of Balad, about 55 miles (90 kilometers) north of Baghdad.
Read: 6 Turkish soldiers killed in attacks by Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq, Ankara says
The victims were 15 men and three women. Among them were 10 Iranians, two Iraqis — the bus driver and his son — and six people of unknown nationality, the officials said.
Arbaeen marks the anniversary of the 40th day of mourning following the seventh-century death of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson Hussein at the hands of the Muslim Umayyad forces in the Battle of Karbala, during the tumultuous first century of Islam’s history.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani was personally observing the entry of Iranian pilgrims to Iraq via the Shalamcheh border crossing on Saturday, where he and Iranian Vice President Mohammad Mokhber also laid the foundation stone for a railway project that will provide rail transportation between the two countries.
Read more: 8 killed in attack by gunmen on an Iraqi village: Official
Putin, Erdogan set to meet amid efforts to repair Ukraine grain deal
Russian President Vladimir Putin will host Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan for talks next week, the Kremlin announced Friday, just over six weeks after Moscow broke off a deal brokered by Ankara and the U.N. that allowed Ukrainian grain to reach world markets safely despite the 18-month war.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin and Erdogan would meet Monday in Russia’s Black Sea resort of Sochi.
The announcement ended weeks of speculation about when and where the two leaders might meet next, while international efforts continue to try to patch up the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which sent grain to parts of Africa, the Middle East and Asia where hunger is a growing threat.
Read: Russia's Putin attends BRICS summit in South Africa remotely while facing war crimes warrant
Ukraine and Russia are both major global suppliers of wheat, barley, sunflower oil and other commodities that developing nations rely on.
Turkey, together with the United Nations, brokered the deal in July 2022 that allowed Ukraine to resume shipping foodstuffs from three Black Sea ports. Under the initiative, ship and cargo inspections were overseen from Turkey, and vessels sailed to and from Ukraine from there. Almost 33,000 tons of grain left Ukraine while the agreement was in effect.
Ankara's role was key. Turkey is one of Russia’s main trading partners and a logistical hub for Russia’s foreign trade amid Western sanctions. Erdogan calls Putin “my dear friend.”
A separate memorandum that Moscow and the U.N. agreed to at the same time as the Ukraine initiative pledged to help to overcome wartime obstacles to Russian exports of food and fertilizer. Russian officials repeatedly threatened to pull out of the deals and finally did in July, alleging its conditions hadn’t been met.
Read: Putin profits off US and European reliance on Russian nuclear fuel
Russia has complained that restrictions on shipping and insurance have hampered its agricultural exports, but it has shipped record amounts of wheat since last year.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres sent Russia a new proposal in hopes of reviving the deal but it didn’t satisfy Moscow’s demands, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said while hosting his Turkish counterpart, Hakan Fidan, for talks in Moscow on Thursday.
Lavrov said he gave the Turkish government a list of actions that the West would have to take in order for Ukraine's Black Sea exports to resume. The scheduled talks between Putin and Erdogan could help unlock that.
The announcement of Monday's meeting coincided with the departure of two bulk cargo ships Friday from the Ukrainian port city of Yuzhne.
The Liberia-flagged Anna-Theresa and the Ocean Courtesy, traveling under a Marshall Islands flag, were carrying pig iron and iron ore concentrate, Ukrainian Minister of Infrastructure Oleksandr Kubrakov said.
It was not clear under what legal and security circumstances the ships had sailed.
Read: Russian mercenary leader Prigozhin's commanders met Putin after short-lived mutiny, pledged loyalty
The Ocean Courtesy was headed to Romania’s Black Sea port of Constanta and is estimated to arrive there Saturday afternoon, according to the global ship tracking website MarineTraffic. The website said the Anna-Theresa would reach Varna in Bulgaria the same day.
Meanwhile, Russian officials said Friday that air defenses intercepted drones heading toward three of the country’s western regions. Regional governors said defense systems stopped three drones in the Kursk, Belgorod and Moscow regions.
Moscow airports briefly halted flights but no major damage or injuries were reported, according to Russian authorities.
Drones aimed at targets inside Russia — and blamed by Moscow on Ukraine — have become almost daily occurrences as the war has entered its 19th month and Kyiv’s forces pursue a counteroffensive. Recently, the drones have reached deeper into Russia.
The apparent Ukrainian strategy is to unnerve Russia and pile pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin, although Kyiv officials normally neither claim nor deny responsibility for attacks on Russian soil.
The Associated Press has not been able to determine whether the drones were launched from Ukraine or inside Russia.
Ukraine’s military intelligence chief, Maj. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, said in an interview with online outlet The War Zone that “we work from the territory of Russia.” He did not elaborate.
Read: Putin says Russia is 'united as never before' during Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting
Meanwhile, satellite images analyzed by the AP show that suspected Ukrainian drone attacks late Tuesday destroyed at least two Ilyushin Il-76 military transport planes at a Russian air base.
The transport planes were deliberately targeted, according to Budanov.
The images taken Thursday show Princess Olga Pskov International Airport, which is a dual military-civilian airport about 700 kilometers (400 miles) north of the Ukrainian border and near Estonia and Latvia.
The four-engine Il-76 is the workhorse of the Russian military’s airlift capacity and is able to land and take off in rugged conditions. The Russian military is believed to have over 100 of them in its fleet.
The AP analysis, conducted Friday, showed what appeared to be the blackened hulks of two Il-76s on separate parking pads on the air base’s apron. One included the plane’s tail, the other appeared to show pieces of another aircraft. Fire damage could be seen around the pad.
Eleven other Il-76s were moved off their parking pads into different positions on the airport’s taxiways, possibly in an attempt to make it more difficult for them to be struck again. One was on the runway itself. Another Il-76 remained on the pad, though it wasn’t clear why.
The satellite image was taken at 1:03 p.m. GMT Thursday. Videos on social media Thursday night showed anti-aircraft fire going off around the air base again, though it remained unclear whether it was another attack.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday that his country had developed a weapon that hit a target 700 kilometers (400 miles) away, apparently referencing the air base attack. He described the weapon as being produced by Ukraine’s Ministry of Strategic Industries but gave no other details.
Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of the National Security and Defense Counci of Ukraine, suggested on television Friday that the weapon can fly even further than the distance Zelenskyy mentioned.
Ex-Italian PM says French missile downed an airliner in 1980 by accident in bid to kill Gadhafi
A former Italian premier, in an interview published on Saturday, contended that a French air force missile accidentally brought down a passenger jet over the Mediterranean Sea in 1980 in a failed bid to assassinate Libya’s then leader Moammar Gadhafi.
Former two-time Premier Giuliano Amato appealed to French President Emmanuel Macron to either refute or confirm his assertion about the cause of the crash on June 27, 1980, which killed all 81 persons aboard the Italian domestic flight.
In an interview with Rome daily La Repubblica, Amato said he is convinced that France hit the plane while targeting a Libyan military jet.
While acknowledging he has no hard proof, Amato also contended that Italy tipped off Gadhafi, and so the Libyan, who was heading back to Tripoli from a meeting in Yugoslavia, didn’t board the Libyan military jet.
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What caused the crash is one of modern Italy’s most enduring mysteries. Some say a bomb exploded aboard the Itavia jetliner on a flight from Bologna to Sicily, while others say examination of the wreckage, pulled up from the seafloor years later, indicate it was hit by a missile.
Radar traces indicated a flurry of aircraft activity in that part of the skies when the plane went down.
“The most credible version is that of responsibility of the French air force, in complicity with the Americans and who participated in a war in the skies that evening of June 27,” Amato was quoted as saying.
NATO planned to “simulate an exercise, with many planes in action, during which a missile was supposed to be fired” with Gadhafi as the target, Amato said.
Read: Typhoon Saola makes landfall in southern China after nearly 900,000 people moved to safety
In the aftermath of the crash, French, U.S. and NATO officials denied any military activity in the skies that night.
According to Amato, a missile was allegedly fired by a French fighter jet that had taken off from an aircraft carrier, possibly off Corsica’s southern coast.
Macron, 45, was a toddler when the Italian passenger jet went down in the sea near the tiny Italian island of Ustica.
“I ask myself why a young president like Macron, while age-wise extraneous to the Ustica tragedy, wouldn’t want to remove the shame that weighs on France,” Amato told La Repubblica. ”And he can remove it in only two ways — either demonstrating that the this thesis is unfounded or, once the (thesis’) foundation is verified, by offering the deepest apologies to Italy and to the families of the victims in the name of his government.”
Amato, who is 85, said that in 2000, when he was premier, he wrote to the then presidents of the United States and France, Bill Clinton and Jacques Chirac, respectively, to press them to shed light on what happened. But ultimately, those entreaties yielded “total silence,” Amato said.
When queried by The Associated Press, Macron’s office said Saturday it wouldn’t immediately comment on Amato’s remarks.
Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni called on Amato to say if he has concrete elements to back his assertions so that her government could pursue any further investigation.
Amato’s words “merit attention,’' Meloni said in a statement issued by her office, while noting that the former premier had specified that his assertions are “fruit of personal deductions.”
Assertions of French involvement aren’t new. In a 2008 television interview, former Italian President Francesco Cossiga, who was serving as premier when the crash occurred, blamed it on a French missile whose target had been a Libyan military jet and said he learned that Italy’s secret services military branch had tipped off Gadhafi.
Gadhafi was killed in Libya’s civil war in 2011.
A few weeks after the crash, the wreckage of a Libyan MiG, with the badly decomposed body of its pilot, was discovered in the remote mountains of southern Calabria.
Former Harrods owner Mohamed Al Fayed, whose son died in car crash with Princess Diana, dies at 94
Mohamed Al Fayed, the flamboyant Egypt-born businessman whose son was killed in a car crash with Princess Diana, died this week, his family said Friday. He was 94.
Al Fayed, the longtime owner of Harrods department store and the Fulham Football Club, was devastated by the death of son Dodi Fayed in the car crash in Paris with Diana 26 years ago. He spent years mourning the loss and fighting the British establishment he blamed for their deaths.
Also read: Diana's last moments: French doctor recalls 'tragic night'
“Mrs Mohamed Al Fayed, her children and grandchildren wish to confirm that her beloved husband, their father and their grandfather, Mohamed, has passed away peacefully of old age on Wednesday August 30, 2023,″ his family said in a statement released by the Fulham club. “He enjoyed a long and fulfilled retirement surrounded by his loved ones.″
Al Fayed was convinced Dodi and Diana were killed in a conspiracy masterminded by Prince Philip, the husband of Queen Elizabeth II. He maintained the royal family arranged the accident because they did not like Diana dating an Egyptian. Al Fayed claimed that Diana was pregnant and planning to marry Dodi and that the royal family could not countenance the princess marrying a Muslim.
In 2008, Al Fayed told an inquest the list of alleged conspirators included Philip, two former London police chiefs and the CIA.
Also read: Diana's car auctioned as 25th anniversary of her death nears
The inquest concluded that Diana and Dodi died because of the reckless actions of their driver — an employee of the Ritz Hotel owned by Al Fayed — and paparazzi chasing the couple. Separate inquiries in the U.K. and France also concluded there was no conspiracy.
Al Fayed's relationship with the royal family was recently depicted in season five of “The Crown,” in which the billionaire, played by Salim Daw, gets to know Diana.
The son of a school inspector, Al Fayad was born on Jan. 27, 1929, in Alexandria, Egypt. After early investments in shipping in Italy and the Middle East, he moved to Britain in the 1960s and started building an empire.
Also read: William, Harry to unveil Diana statue as royal rift simmers
At the height of his wealth, Al Fayed owned the Ritz hotel in Paris and Fulham soccer team in London as well as Harrods, the luxury department store in the capital’s tony Knightsbridge neighborhood.
The Sunday Times Rich List, which documents the fortunes of Britain’s wealthiest people, put the family’s fortune at 1.7 billion pounds ($2.1 billion) this year, ranking Al Fayed as the 104th richest person in the country.
Al Fayed first hit the headlines in the 1980s when he battled with rival tycoon “Tiny” Rowland for control of the House of Fraser group, which included Harrods.
Al Fayed and his brother bought a 30% stake in House of Fraser for 130 million pounds in 1985. They paid an additional 615 million pounds to take full control the following year.
That transaction sparked an investigation by the Department of Trade and Industry, which concluded Al Fayed and his brother had “dishonestly misrepresented their origins, their wealth, their business interests and their resources.” Despite those findings, the deal was allowed to go through.
Al Fayed was also a key player in the “cash for questions” scandal that roiled British politics in the 1990s.
Al Fayed was sued for libel by a British lawmaker, Neil Hamilton, after the businessman claimed he had given Hamilton envelopes of cash and a lavish stay at the Ritz in Paris, in return for asking questions in the House of Commons.
Hamilton’s lawyer, Desmond Browne, claimed the allegation was fantasy, saying: ″If there were Olympic medals for lying, Mr. Fayed would be a prime contender for a gold one.”
A jury found in Al Fayed’s favor in December 1999.
But he was never accepted by the British establishment. The government twice rejected his applications for citizenship, though the reasons were never released publicly.
Al Fayed bought underdog London soccer team Fulham in 1997, and spent lavishly on coaches and players to improve its performance. It was a success, with the club winning promotion to the Premier League in 2001.
Al Fayed was also friends with Michael Jackson and had a statue of the pop star erected outside Fulham’s London stadium in 2011, two years after Jackson’s death.
Never popular with Fulham fans, it was removed in 2013 by Al Fayed’s successor as team owner, Shahid Khan.
India launches spacecraft to study the sun after successful landing near the moon's south pole
India launched its first space mission to study the sun on Saturday, less than two weeks after a successful uncrewed landing near the south polar region of the moon.
The Aditya-L1 spacecraft took off on board a satellite launch vehicle from the Sriharikota space center in southern India on a quest to study the sun from a point about 1.5 million kilometers (930,000 miles) from earth.
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The spacecraft is equipped with seven payloads to study the sun's corona, chromosphere, photosphere and solar wind, the Indian Space Research Organization said.
India became the first country to land a spacecraft near the moon's south pole on Aug. 23 — a historic voyage to uncharted territory that scientists believe could hold vital reserves of frozen water. After a failed attempt to land on the moon in 2019, India joined the United States, the Soviet Union and China as only the fourth country to achieve this milestone.
The sun study, combined with India's successful moon landing, would completely change the image of ISRO in the world community, said Manish Purohit, a former ISRO scientist.
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The Aditya-L1 was headed for the L1 point of the Earth-Sun system, which affords an uninterrupted view of the sun, ISRO said. "This will provide a greater advantage of observing solar activities and their effect on space weather in real-time."
Once in place, the satellite would provide reliable forewarning of an onslaught of particles and radiation from heightened solar activity that has the potential to knock out power grids on Earth, said B.R. Guruprasad, a space scientist, in an article in The Times of India newspaper. The advanced warning can protect the satellites that are the backbone of global economic structure as well as the people living in space stations.
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"Those seven payloads are going to study the sun as a star in all the possible spectrum positions that we have visible, ultraviolet, and X-ray. … It's like we're going to get a black and white image, the color image and the high-definition image, 4K image of the sun, so that we don't miss out on anything that is happening on the sun," Purohit said.
Typhoon Saola makes landfall in southern China after nearly 900,000 people moved to safety
Typhoon Saola made landfall in southern China before dawn Saturday after nearly 900,000 people were moved to safety and most of Hong Kong and other parts of coastal southern China suspended business, transport and classes.
Guangdong province's meteorological bureau said the powerful storm churned into an outlying district of the city of Zhuhai, just south of Hong Kong at 3:30 a.m. It was forecast to move in a southwesterly direction along the Guangdong coast at a speed of around 17 kph (10 mph), gradually weakening before heading out to sea.
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On Friday, 780,000 people in Guangdong were moved away from areas at risk as did 100,000 others in neighboring Fujian province. More than 80,000 fishing vessels returned to port.
Workers stayed at home and students in various cities saw the start of their school year postponed to next week. Trading on Hong Kong’s stock market was suspended Friday and hundreds of people were stranded at the airport after about 460 flights were canceled in the key regional business and travel hub.
Rail authorities in mainland China halted all trains entering or leaving Guangdong province from Friday night to Saturday evening, state television CCTV reported.
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The Hong Kong Observatory had issued a No. 10 hurricane alert, the highest warning under the city’s weather system. It was the first No. 10 warning since Super Typhoon Mangkhut hit Hong Kong in 2018.
The observatory said Saola — with maximum sustained winds of 195 kilometers (121 miles) per hour — came its closest to the financial hub at around 11 p.m. Friday, skirting about 30 kilometers (19 miles) south of the city’s Tsim Sha Tsui shopping district. The storm’s eyewall, which surrounds its eye, was moving across the city overnight, “posing a high threat” to the territory, the agency said. By Saturday, morning, it said, maximum sustained wind speeds had fallen to 145 kilometers (90 miles) per hour.
The observatory warned of serious flooding in coastal areas and said the maximum water level might be similar to when Mangkhut felled trees and tore scaffolding off buildings in the city.
In recent months, China has experienced some of its heaviest rains and deadliest flooding in years in various regions, with dozens killed, including in outlying mountainous parts of the capital, Beijing.
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As the storm's heavy rains and strong winds closed in on Hong Kong, about 400 people sought refuge at temporary shelters and ferry and bus services halted. Residents of low-lying areas placed sandbags at their doors hoping to prevent their homes from being flooded.
Dozens of trees were knocked down, and seven people were injured and sought treatment at public hospitals. Classes at all schools were to remain suspended Saturday.
Some residents, including security guard Shirley Ng, still had to go to work Friday. Ng said people were stocking up on food to prepare for the storm.
“I just hope that the typhoon won’t cause causalities,” she said.
Weather authorities in the nearby gambling hub of Macao also warned of flooding, forecasting that water levels might reach 1.5 meters (5 feet) in low-lying areas Saturday morning. The cross-border bridge connecting Hong Kong, Macao and Zhuhai city was closed at midafternoon. Macao leader Ho Iat Seng ordered a halt to casino operations.
Another storm, Haikui, was gradually moving toward eastern China. Coupled with the influence of Saola, parts of Guangdong, Fujian and Zhejiang provinces would experience strong winds and heavy rains, the meteorological administration said. It predicted Haikui would hit Taiwan’s east coast Sunday.
Dozens of domestic flights were canceled along with air services to Hong Kong and Macao.
Despite the twin storms, China's military conducted more operations Friday night and early Saturday meant to intimidate Taiwan, a self-ruled island democracy that Beijing seeks to bring under Chinese sovereignty by force if necessary. Taiwan's Defense Ministry said it had detected six Chinese military aircraft and three naval vessels around Taiwan during the 24 hours leading up to 6 a.m. Saturday.
It said the island's armed forces were monitoring the situation and put aircraft, navy vessels and land-based missile systems on alert. However, it said there were no indications that the Chinese ships or aircraft had crossed the median line in the Taiwan Strait or entered Taiwan's air defense identification zone as they often do.
Saola passed just south of Taiwan on Wednesday before turning toward mainland China, with its outer bands hitting the island’s southern cities with torrential rain. The typhoon also lashed the Philippines earlier this week, displacing tens of thousands of people in the northern part of the islands because of flooding.