ROME: Milan airport is to be named after Italy’s scandal-dogged tycoon Silvio Berlusconi, a former three-time prime minister, despite protests Tuesday from the Italian city’s center-left mayor.
Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, who is also transport minister and head of the far-right League party, announced the name change Friday, just over a year after Berlusconi’s death.
“The final decision rests with the Minister of Transport and I am ready to sign it, with pride and emotion, in memory of my friend Silvio, great entrepreneur, great Milanese, and great Italian,” Salvini said.
Milan’s mayor Giuseppe Sala said Tuesday the decision to change the name of Malpensa, one of the biggest airports in Italy, should not have been Salvini’s alone.
“Can a decision of this kind be made in 24 hours?” he was quoted by the AGI Italian news agency as saying.
Billionaire Berlusconi, who died in June last year aged 86, had strong ties to Milan but was a highly divisive figure.
While some Italians saw him as a charming, self-made man, others slammed him as an international embarrassment, particularly due to his many legal woes and sexual scandals.
The former cruise ship singer was born in the northern Italian city and built his immense fortune there.
For over 30 years he chaired AC Milan, which won the Champions League five times on his watch.
But he was also dogged by accusations he paid young starlets for their silence over his notoriously hedonistic soirees, which he always insisted were elegant dinners.
Berlusconi was sentenced in 2013 to seven years in jail for paying for sex with a 17-year-old starlet known as “Ruby the Heart-Stealer,” though that conviction was later overturned.
His second wife, Veronica Lario, divorced him in 2014, saying at the time that she could no longer tolerate his “consorting with minors.”
The Milan division of Italy’s main opposition party, the center-left Democratic Party (PD), also assailed what the “inappropriate and wrong choice.”
“Our gateway to the world deserves to represent a shared memory and the unifying values of our country,” it said in a statement, saying it was collecting names of “non-divisive figures” for whom Malpensa could be named.
Left-wing trade union CGIL posted an online petition on Change.org to propose naming the airport instead after Carla Fracci (1936-2021), a renowned Italian ballet dancer from Milan.
It said Fracci “transmitted elegance, style and bravura throughout the world,” and appealed to authorities to “avoid choices that are sources of deep divisions.”
Milan airport to be named after former PM Berlusconi
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Milan airport to be named after former PM Berlusconi
- Matteo Salvini: ‘The final decision rests with the Minister of Transport and I am ready to sign it in memory of my friend Silvio, great entrepreneur, great Milanese, and great Italian’
- Milan’s mayor Giuseppe Sala said that the decision to change the name of Malpensa, one of the biggest airports in Italy, should not have been Salvini’s alone
Heavy shelling, explosions spark fear along Pakistan-Afghanistan border
- Residents fear for their safety amid border clashes
- 1,500 Afghan families displaced due to heavy shelling and explosions
- Pakistan denies targeting civilians, says its strikes focus on militants
LAL PUR, Afghanistan/PESHAWAR, Pakistan: People living along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan said they were considering fleeing their homes because of heavy shelling and explosions as fighting between troops from both sides entered a seventh day on Wednesday.
The South Asian allies-turned-foes have engaged in their worst fighting in years following Pakistani airstrikes on major Afghan cities last week, increasing volatility in a region also on edge over US and Israeli strikes on Iran.
Islamabad has said its airstrikes, which have at times directly targeted the Taliban government, are aimed at ending Afghan support for militants carrying out attacks on Pakistan. The Taliban has denied aiding militant groups.
SHELLING STARTS AS VILLAGERS ARE BREAKING RAMADAN FAST
Residents of towns and villages in Pakistan’s northwest said fighting between border forces starts in the evenings, placing their homes in the line of fire, often at sunset when families are breaking their fast in the holy month of Ramadan.
“There is complete silence in the day, but the moment we sit for iftar dinner, the two sides start shelling,” Farid Khan Shinwari from Landi Kotal, a town near the Torkham border crossing, told Reuters.
“We open our fast in extremely difficult situations, as you never know when a shell can hit your house.”
Residents in the town and nearby villages said there had been heavy shelling and some explosions heard in the past few days, prompting many to flee their homes.
On the other side of the border, Afghans shared similar stories of skirmishes and families fleeing their homes.
Hundreds had been displaced to an open dirt field under makeshift tents, while others had no shelter at all. Officials say around 1,500 families have fled their homes.
Fighting along the 2,600-km (1,615-mile) border has ebbed and flowed over the week-long conflict, with both sides saying they have inflicted heavy losses on the other country and gained ground in the fighting.
Reuters has been unable to verify these accounts.
TURKEY HAS OFFERED TO MEDIATE
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif that Ankara would help reinstate a ceasefire, the Turkish Presidency said on Tuesday, as other countries that had offered to mediate have since been hit by the conflict in the Gulf.
On Wednesday, both countries reported exchanges of heavy fire, with Afghanistan’s defense ministry saying Taliban forces shot down a Pakistani drone and captured seven border posts.
A spokesperson for the ministry said 110 civilians, including 65 women and children, had been killed since the fighting began and another 123 were wounded. The United Nations mission for Afghanistan has listed 42 deaths so far.
Pakistan’s Information Minister Attaullah Tarar disputed both figures, saying: “Pakistan exercises great care in only targeting terrorists and support infrastructure. No civilian structures have been targeted.”
On Saturday, Pakistan struck “ammunition and critical equipment” at the Bagram air base north of Kabul, Tarar said, a key American command center through the 20-year Afghan war.
