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ACCIDENT

Swedish boat accident clouds America’s Cup

America's Cup officials pressed on Saturday with their probe of the capsizing of a catamaran that killed Briton Andrew Simpson, seeking answers to keep world sailing's most prestigious event afloat.

Swedish boat accident clouds America's Cup

Artemis Racing member Simpson, nicknamed “Bart,” died when the Swedish team’s AC72 overturned while training on San Francisco Bay on Thursday.

The accident has plunged the Cup into uncertainty, fueling concerns over the safety of the 72-foot America’s Cup catamarans and prompting Patrizio Bertelli, chief executive of the Prada fashion house and sponsor of Italian challenger Luna Rossa, to say he would consider pulling out his team.

America’s Cup Regatta Director Iain Murray, spearheading the review of the incident, said Saturday that he has scheduled a meeting with all four teams —

defending champions Oracle of the United States, Artemis Racing, Emirates Team

New Zealand and Luna Rossa, for Tuesday in San Francisco.

“The meeting with the teams is a crucial next step,” Murray said.

“We need to establish an open flow of information to ensure this review meets its goals of fact-finding and putting us in a position to recommend changes, if necessary.”

The review will include study of all data that was captured at the time of the incident.

“Once we have the information, the basic facts, all the data, then we will be able to re-build the entire chain of events and start to assess why this incident resulted in a tragic loss of life,” Murray said.

In the meantime, Artemis Racing on Saturday urged the sailing community to refrain from speculation.

“Until this process is complete, any conclusions being made about the events that led to the boat’s capsizing and its tragic outcome are pure speculation,” Artemis said in a statement posted on its website.

“Out of respect for Bart’s memory and his family, we ask that the broader sailing community and others reserve judgment until all the facts are known, and not persist in unnecessary rumour.”

But Simpson’s death has cast a pall over the event.

Bertelli told Italian magazine Yacht Capital, in comments posted on the website yachtonline on Friday, that his team was taking the weekend to consider its position.

“The way it is now, it’s not OK,” Bertelli said.

“Those responsible must take note. Not everybody has understood that we’re now in an extreme America’s Cup, whereas it was romantic before.”

“We’re now like Formula One or rally,” he said.

The excitement of those high-tech, high-speed motor-sports was just what billionaire Larry Ellison was going for when he pushed for the new parameters for the America’s Cup craft.

Ellison’s Oracle is the defending champion, defeating Switzerland’s Alinghi in the 33rd edition in 2010 in a competition marred by legal wrangling over the rules that began after Alinghi won the 32nd renewal in 2007.

America’s Cup chief executive Stephen Barclay said that in the wake of Simpson’s death “nothing is off the table” as organizers consider their options.

But he voiced confidence that “the event in San Francisco will be a fantastic event.”

He stressed that no decisions will be made until after the review into why the Artemis boat “nose-dived” and broke apart while turning.

Simpson, an Olympic champion sailor, was apparently trapped under a piece of the boat, and by the time he was found and pulled out of the water he could not be revived.

Prior to the tragedy, the 2013 America’s Cup had already faced a number of legal challenges as well as questions about funding, environmental impact an participation.

Originally envisioned to include more than a dozen challengers battling for the right to take on Oracle in the final in September, the July 13-September 1 challenger series is now down to three — the stricken Artemis, Luna Rossa and Emirates Team New Zealand.

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ACCIDENT

Cable car survivor must be returned to family in Italy, Israel court rules

An Israeli court ruled Monday that a boy whose parents died in an Italian cable car crash be returned to family in Italy, after his grandfather was accused of illegally bringing him to Israel.

Aya Biran , a paternal aunt of Eitan Biran who was the sole survivor of a deadly cable car crash in Italy, arrives at Tel Aviv’s Justice Court on October 10, 2021
Aya Biran , a paternal aunt of Eitan Biran who was the sole survivor of a deadly cable car crash in Italy, arrives at Tel Aviv’s Justice Court on October 10, 2021. Ahmad GHARABLI / AFP

The battle for custody of Eitan Biran, the sole survivor of the May accident that killed 14 people, has captured headlines since his maternal grandfather, Shmulik Peleg, brought him to Israel on a private jet last month.

The child lost his parents, younger brother and great-grandparents in the May 23 accident near the top of the Mottarone mountain in the northwestern Piedmont region, where the family was out on a Sunday excursion to the scenic spot served by the cable car.

The cable car’s pull cable snapped just before it reached destination. It then flew backwards, dislodging itself from a second, supporting cable, and crashed to the ground.

Investigations later revealed that emergency brakes that could have stopped the car on its supporting cable, avoiding the tragedy, had been deliberately deactivated to avoid delays following a technical malfunction.

Three individuals responsible for the cable car’s management were subsequently arrested.

The wreckage of a cable car that crashed on the slopes of the Mottarone peak above Stresa, Piedmont on May 23, 2021, killing 14.

The wreckage of a cable car that crashed on the slopes of the Mottarone peak above Stresa, Piedmont on May 23, 2021, killing 14. MIGUEL MEDINA / AFP.

Peleg has insisted that he drove Eitan from Italy to Switzerland before jetting him back to Israel – instead of returning him paternal aunt Aya Biran, who lives in northern Italy – because Eitan’s late parents wanted him to be raised in the Jewish state.

But Peleg has become the subject kidnapping probe by Italian prosecutors and Israeli police questioned him over those allegations last month.

A statement Monday from the Tel Aviv court where Aya Biran had filed a complaint said judges “did not accept the grandfather’s claim that the aunt has no custody rights”.

It recognised an Italian judgement that established Biran as a legitimate guardian and said Peleg had “unlawfully” removed the boy from his aunt’s care.

The court “ordered the return of the minor to his usual place of residence in Italy”.

The court also found that “a connection” between the surviving members of the Italy- and Israel-based relatives was in Eitan’s “best interests”.

Peleg was also ordered to pay Biran’s legal fees, amounting to 70,000 shekels ($22,000).

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Shmuel Peleg, the grandfather of Eitan Biran, hugs a relative outside the Justice Court in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv on October 8, 2021.

Shmuel Peleg, the grandfather of Eitan Biran, hugs a relative outside the Justice Court in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv on October 8, 2021. Ahmad GHARABLI / AFP

The case has stirred emotions in Israel, and throngs of journalists had surrounded the Tel Aviv court for hearings last month, with some pro-Peleg protesters insisting it was wrong to send a Jewish child out of Israel.

Before judges ordered the sides to stop talking to the media, Peleg told Israel’s Channel 12 in September that his grandson was “in the place where he is supposed to be, in his home, in Israel.”

Eitan and his parents, Amit Biran and Tal Peleg, had been living in Italy, where Amit Biran was studying medicine, together with their other child, Tom.

Eitan suffered severe chest and abdominal injuries and spent a week in intensive care after the May accident that occurred when a cable snapped on the aerial tram bringing weekend visitors to the top of the Piedmont region’s Mottarone mountain.

The accident was one of Italy’s worst in over two decades.   

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