AN American aircraft carrier strike group was patrolling in the South China Sea Women's Demarcus Walker Jersey , the United States Navy said on Saturday, days after China told Washington not to challenge its sovereignty in the waterway.
The USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier group was engaging in “routine operations in the South China Sea,” the US Navy said on its website.
The navy noted that the ships and aircraft had recently conducted exercises off Hawaii and Guam to “maintain and improve their readiness and develop cohesion as a strike group.”
“We are looking forward to demonstrating those capabilities while building upon existing strong relationships with our allies, partners and friends in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region,” strike group commander Rear Admiral James Kilby said in the online statement.
China’s foreign ministry said ships and aircraft were allowed to operate in the area according to international law.
But China “firmly opposes any country’s attempt to undermine China’s sovereignty and security in the name of the freedom of navigation and overflight,” spokesman Geng Shuang told journalists last Wednesday, responding to reports that the Vinson was headed to the South China Sea. “We also urge the US to refrain from challenging China’s sovereignty and security and to respect regional countries’ efforts to maintain peace and stability in the South China Sea.”
The Vinson has deployed to the South China Sea 16 times in its 35-year history, the US Navy said.
The United States has several times sent warships and planes to assert so-called “freedom of navigation” in the South China Sea, sparking protests from China.
By Marzia De Giuli
ROME, Aug. 4 (Xinhua) -- Marco Pantani, the last cyclist to win the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de France in the same year of 1998, may have been murdered, according to evidence presented by his family which led prosecutors to reopen the case after he died 10 years ago due to a massive ingestion of cocaine.
The local press said at the weekend that a court in the beachside resort city of Rimini was investigating Pantani's death after his family argued that he was forced to drink a potion containing a huge volume of the drug.
Judicial sources quoted by ANSA news agency on Monday said the examining parties will get down to the inquiry starting from September.
"It will certainly be a complex and long-lasting investigation, made of various phases," the family's lawyer Antonio De Rensis said.
"MY SON WAS KILLED"
"Ever since they phoned to break to me the tragic news of my son's death, I have always believed that someone killed him," Pantani's mother Tonina Belletti Pantani told Xinhua.
When Pantani was found dead aged 34 in a hotel suite in Rimini on Valentine's Day 2004, it emerged from the first inquiry that he had died after overdosing of cocaine. He had become depressed and addicted to drugs since his disqualification from the Giro d'Italia in 1999 for failing a doping blood test.
But doubts over the accepted truth that the much-loved cyclist had committed suicide were expressed soon after his death, when Belletti Pantani suggested that her son had been killed because he had gained knowledge of sensitive information about something.
"When I started reasoning about the elements emerged from the first inquiry (which led to plea bargains for three people who sold cocaine to Italy's most famous cyclist, while a fourth was acquitted), I became increasingly convinced that I was right," she went on to say.
10-YEAR-LONG MISTERY
Drug dealing, doping in cycling and illegal bets were among the alleged elements of the mystery surrounding the rider's death over the past years. Media reports claimed there had been a cover-up in the original investigation.
Pantani's mother never stopped campaigning for the case to be reopened. "There are several elements that do not add up. Analyses on Marco's body said he had ingested 20 grams of cocaine, too many to be taken alone. This is why we say that he was made to drink diluted cocaine," she told Xinhua.
She also added the cuts and bruises on his son's body could not have been procured only from the fall due to a stroke, and insisted that he was beaten by someone.
"Moreover, the first inquiry said that nobody could have entered his room, whereas a second check showed there was free access to the hotel from the garage," Belletti Pantani pointed out.
She also explained to Xinhua there was a sort of "reenacted chaos" in the room, as if someone had modified the scene. "Finally, there were three winter jackets that Marco had left in Milan, not taking them with him in Rimini. How did they end up in his room?" she said.
DOUBTS OVER SUICIDE
"I do not know whether there will be another day for me," Pantani was quoted by Sky television as telling a guest of his hotel a day before his death.
Another person who met Pantani just hours before he was found dead was Olivier Laghi, the restaurateur who brought him the dinner. The man, a fan of Pantani, remembers asking the champion whether he could take his little son to his room the following day to get an autograph.
"He answered with a timid smile and a pack on my back that there was no problem and we would meet the following day," Laghi was quoted as saying by Corriere della Sera, one of Italy's leading newspapers. "He had not the face of someone who wanted to commit suicide," the restaurateur stressed.
"Absolutely never. Marco would have never committed suicide," Giuseppe "Pino" Roncucci, Pantani's first sporting director and a major influence on the future champion, told Xinhua.
"I learnt about his death from television, and I felt a profound sorrow because we had a very good relation when he was at the beginning of his career. For as I knew him, he loved life so much that the thought of suicide would even not touch slightly his mind," . Cheap Chile Jerseys Cheap Brazil Jerseys Cheap Belgium Soccer Jerseys Cheap Argentina Soccer Jerseys Wholesale Wales Jerseys Wholesale USA Womens Soccer Jerseys Wholesale Uruguay Soccer Jerseys Wholesale Switzerland Soccer Jerseys Wholesale Sweden Soccer Jerseys Wholesale Spain Soccer Jerseys