ROME: The captain of the luxury superyacht which sank off Sicily last week is being investigated in a probe for potential manslaughter, reports said Monday.
James Cutfield, a 51-year-old New Zealand national, was one of 15 people who survived the sinking of the Bayesian, which left seven people dead, including UK tech tycoon Mike Lynch and his daughter.
Prosecutors on the Italian island on Saturday announced they were investigating potential crimes of negligent shipwreck and manslaughter over the sinking of the yacht in a storm before dawn on August 19.
They did not name any suspects and stressed the investigation was at an early stage. The prosecutor’s office did not respond to AFP requests for comment on Monday.
Lynch, a 59-year-old British tech entrepreneur and investor, had invited friends and family onto the boat to celebrate his recent acquittal in a massive US fraud case.
But the 56-meter (185-foot) yacht was struck by something akin to a mini-tornado as it was anchored off Porticello, near Palermo.
The body of the yacht’s cook was found shortly afterwards, and six people — including the businessman and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah — were reported missing.
Following a major search operation, divers pulled up the bodies of four of Lynch’s friends on Wednesday, that of Lynch himself on Thursday, and finally that of Hannah on Friday.
The yacht currently lies on its side on the seabed, some 50 meters down.
All six bodies were found in the cabins closest to the surface, five in one and Hannah’s body in another, and officials said they likely moved there while trying to find pockets of air.
Captain investigated over Sicily yacht sinking: reports
https://arab.news/yhw3c
Captain investigated over Sicily yacht sinking: reports
UK to change travel entry requirements: what to know
“This can be either through an ETA or an eVisa,” the Home Office said
LONDON: The UK government this week announced an overhaul in non-visa entry requirements for visitors from next year.
The Electronic Travel Authorization (ETA) scheme is similar to the ESTA system in the United States.
The interior ministry announced that all visitors who do not require a visa to travel to Britain will need an ETA from April 2, 2025.
“Everyone wishing to travel to the UK — except British and Irish citizens — will need permission to travel in advance of coming here.
“This can be either through an ETA or an eVisa,” the Home Office said in a statement.
It is a travel permit digitally linked to the traveler’s passport and is for people entering or transiting the UK without a visa or legal residence rights.
It costs £10 (12 euros, 13 dollars) and permits multiple journeys to the UK for stays of up to six months at a time over two years or until the holder’s passport expires — whichever is sooner.
Eligibility is based on nationality and suitable travelers can apply using the UK ETA app.
Previously, most visitors could arrive at a British airport with their passport and enter the country without a visa.
But that began to change in November last year when the then Conservative government introduced the ETA, starting with Qatari nationals.
The scheme was extended earlier this year and currently includes citizens of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Children and babies from these countries need an ETA too.
Interior minister Yvette Cooper announced on Tuesday that all nationalities except Europeans can apply for an ETA from November 27. They will need one travel to Britain from January 8 next year.
The scheme will then extend to eligible Europeans, who will require an ETA from April 2, 2025. They will be able to apply from March 5.
Eligible travelers will need one even if they are just using the UK to connect to an onward flight abroad.
British and Irish passport holders and those with passports for a British overseas territory do not need an ETA.
Travelers with a visa also do not require one, nor do people with permission to live, work or study in the UK, including people settled under the EU Settlement Scheme agreed as part of Britain’s exit from the European Union in January 2020.
Travelers can get an ETA if they are coming to the UK for up to six months for tourism, visiting family and friends, business or short-term study.
They cannot get married, claim benefits, live in the country through frequent visits, or take up work as a self-employed person.
The Home Office says ETAs are “in line with the approach many other countries have taken to border security, including the US and Australia.”
It also mirrors the ETIAS scheme for visa-exempt nationals traveling to 30 European countries, including France and Germany, that the European Commission expects to be operational early next year.
It is part of the government’s drive to digitise its border and immigration system.
The Home Office says it will ensure “more robust security checks are carried out before people begin their journey to the UK,” which helps prevent “abuse of our immigration system.”
It is partly a consequence of Brexit, which ended freedom of movement to Britain for European nationals.
Heathrow Airport has blamed the ETA scheme for a 90,000 drop in transfer passenger numbers on routes included in the program since it was launched.
It has described the system as “devastating for our hub competitiveness” and wants the government to “review” the inclusion of air transit passengers.
Heathrow Airport has blamed the ETA scheme for a 90,000 drop in transfer passenger numbers on routes included in the program since it was launched. (Wikipedia/File)
Zelensky says will meet Biden ‘this month’ to present Ukraine ‘victory plan’
- Announcement comes as US president to discuss whether or not to let Kyiv fire Western-provided long-range missiles into Russia with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer
KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday that he will meet US leader Joe Biden “this month” to present his “victory plan” on how to end two and a half years of war with Russia.
The announcement came as Biden is due to discuss whether or not to let Kyiv fire Western-provided long-range missiles into Russia with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
“My meeting with President Joe Biden is planned,” Zelensky said at an international conference in Kyiv. “I will present him with a victory plan.”
He gave no specific details on how to end more than 30 months of fighting, saying only that his proposal will involve “a system of interconnected solutions that will give Ukraine enough power — enough to put this war on a course to peace.”
Kyiv has been pressing the West for a green light to use Western weapons to strike into Russia, saying that it could change the course of the war.
Zelensky announced he would meet Biden just over a month into Kyiv’s surprise incursion into the Kursk region, which he had said at the time was partly aimed at forcing Russia into “fair” negotiations.
Zelensky has said he aims to host another international peace summit outlining his vision to end the war in November, to which Russia will be invited.
Bangladesh urges India to keep Sheikh Hasina ‘quiet’ in ‘best interest’ of bilateral ties
- Ousted Bangladeshi PM is in India, with which she enjoyed close ties during 15-year rule
- New caretaker government in Dhaka says it also seeks a good relationship with New Delhi
DHAKA: For the sake of bilateral relations, India should influence Bangladesh’s ex-PM Sheikh Hasina to “keep quiet,” Dhaka’s top diplomat said, as the ousted prime minister continued to give instructions from her exile in New Delhi.
After 15 straight years in power, Hasina resigned and fled to neighboring India on Aug. 5, forced out by weeks of student-led rallies and a nationwide uprising in the wake of a police crackdown on demonstrators that left hundreds of people dead.
In the following days, the parliament was dissolved, and a new temporary administration was appointed, with Nobel Prize-winning economist Muhammad Yunus at the helm.
With the new government in office, Hasina kept making political remarks from India and official calls to her party supporters. She also demanded a “thorough investigation” into the protests-related violence to “bring to justice those responsible for these heinous killings and acts of sabotage” and claimed that the US was behind her ouster.
“As long as she is in India … it is not in the best interest of relations that she continues to sermonize from there. Since she is being given shelter there, we would prefer that she keeps quiet and her hosts tell her that she keeps quiet,” Bangladesh’s Foreign Affairs Adviser Touhid Hossain told Arab News in an interview at his office in Dhaka this week.
A former foreign secretary and ambassador, Hossain was appointed last month as chief of the interim government’s foreign affairs.
While Hasina enjoyed close strategic and economic ties with India during her 15-year rule, Hossain said that the new government in Dhaka also wanted “a good relationship” with New Delhi.
Amid calls for Hasina’s extradition from India to face trial at home for the violence preceding her downfall, he added that time will show if such a request will be made.
“It’s a much wider issue,” he said. “But for the moment, I think that it is in her best interest — and also the interests of her hosts and us — that she keeps quiet.”
Hasina, 76, was one of the world’s longest-ruling female leaders and played a pivotal role in the politics of Bangladesh, a nation of about 170 million people that declared its independence in 1971.
She is the daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the country’s charismatic founding leader, who was killed in 1975 in a military coup when Hasina was 28. She served as prime minister from 1996 to 2001 and regained power in 2009.
Under her leadership, Bangladesh became one of the fastest-growing economies in the region, with World Bank estimates showing that more than 25 million people in the country have been lifted out of poverty in the last two decades.
But critics say she has grown increasingly autocratic and called her a threat to the country’s democracy, with many saying that the sudden collapse of Hasina’s government had reflected a broader discontent against her rule.
The student-led demonstrations that began peacefully in July were against a quota system for government jobs, which was widely criticized for favoring those with connections to the ruling party.
The rallies then turned violent as security forces clashed with protesters, leading to the killing of hundreds of people and triggering a civil disobedience movement that forced Hasina’s resignation.
Bangladesh’s interim government has agreed to a probe into the events by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. According to the OHCHR’s preliminary analysis of the unrest and state violations in addressing it, immediately available data indicates that more than 600 people were killed, but “the reported death toll is likely an underestimate.”
The violations include cases of “extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests and detention, enforced disappearances, torture and ill-treatment.”
European, Muslim countries meet in Spain eyeing schedule for Palestinian statehood
- European, Muslim nations meet to talk two-state solution
- Participants want to work out clear implementation schedule Spain, Norway, Ireland now recognize Palestinian state
MADRID: Spain, hosting a high-level meeting on Friday of several Muslim and European countries on ways to end the Gaza war, called for a clear schedule for the international community to implement a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“We meet to make another push for the end of the war in Gaza, for a way out of the unending spiral of violence between the Palestinians, the Israelis... That way is clear. The implementation of the two-state solution is the only way,” Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares told reporters.
In attendance were his counterparts including from Norway and Slovenia, European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa and members of the Arab-Islamic Contact Group for Gaza that includes Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkiye.
Albares said there was “a clear willingness” among the participants, who notably do not include Israel, “to move on from words to actions and to make strides toward a clear schedule for the effective implementation” of a two-state solution, starting with Palestine joining the United Nations.
Israel was not invited because it was not part of the contact group, Albares said, adding though that “we will be delighted to see Israel at any table where peace and the two-state solution are discussed.”
On May 28, Spain, Norway and Ireland formally recognized a unified Palestinian state ruled by the Palestinian Authority comprising the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, with East Jerusalem as its capital. With them, 146 of the 193 member states of the United Nations now recognize Palestinian statehood.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has repeatedly described the co-existence of two sovereign states on the territory of the former Mandatory Palestine as the only viable path to peace in the region.
Such a two-state solution was set out in the 1991 Madrid Conference and the 1993-95 Oslo Accords, but the peace process has been moribund for years.
However, the search for a peaceful solution has been given new urgency by the 11-month-long war in the Gaza Strip between Israel and the Palestinian militant groups Hamas — the bloodiest episode yet in the overall conflict — as well as escalating violence in the occupied West Bank.
The West Bank, including East Jerusalem, was captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war and has been occupied ever since, with expanding Jewish settlements complicating the issue. Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1980 in a move generally not recognized internationally.
Israel also says guarantees on its security are of paramount importance.
Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide has told Reuters the meeting also needed to discuss the demobilization of Hamas — which controlled Gaza prior to the war — and the normalization of ties between Israel and some other states, notably Saudi Arabia.
Ukrainian pilots begin F-16 training in Romania
- The first four Ukrainian pilots arrived earlier this week and have started their “theoretical training“
- Ukraine’s Defense Minister Rustem Umerov welcomed the program on social media, saying it would ensure that there are “more F-16s in Ukrainian skies“
BUCHAREST: The first group of Ukrainian pilots has started its F-16 fighter jet training at Romania’s regional hub this week, the NATO country’s defense ministry told AFP on Friday.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Kyiv has been looking to boost its air force, asking the West to donate advanced military jets and sending pilots to train in NATO countries, including France.
Romania inaugurated a hub for F-16 training at its Fetesti air base in November 2023, pledging to also train Ukrainians there.
The first four Ukrainian pilots arrived earlier this week and have started their “theoretical training,” Romanian defense ministry spokesperson Constantin Spinu told AFP.
He said that practical training could begin “toward the end of the year.”
Ukraine’s Defense Minister Rustem Umerov welcomed the program on social media, saying it would ensure that there are “more F-16s in Ukrainian skies.”
The Fetesti hub is part of the country’s air base situated about 150 kilometers outside the capital Bucharest, and was inaugurated after an agreement with the Netherlands was reached to make several F-16s available for training.
The planes are maintained by its US-based manufacturer Lockheed Martin, who also provides the training.
The Romanian army has 26 F-16 jets in total, of which 17 were bought from Portugal and nine from Norway.
Norway is due to supply a further 23 jets to Romania by the end of 2025.
