Theresa Maggio

With the good weather more and more rubber rafts and big old fishing boats full of desperate immigrants take off from Libyan shores to tackle the crossing to Sicily. Here is a photo tweeted by a volunteer on the rescue ship Aquarios operated by the group SOS Mediterrane`. The rescue ships had already taken  Read More 

From The Guardian:
"The chances of finding legitimate work – with youth unemployment in Italy at 37% – are slim, and his asylum application is unlikely to succeed: 66% of claims by Gambians last year were rejected, according to Eurostat.

Across Italy, migrants spend their days in parks, or loiter outside bus and train stations, homesick and shocked  Read More 

The weather is clearing in the Mediterranean Sea so immigrants' voyages of despair are picking up. Three Italian ships rescued 1,664 people from nine rubber rafts in trouble. The ship Bettica aided five rafts saving a total of 588 people. The ship Bergamini saved 476 people from two rafts ( can you imagine more than 200 people on a rubber raft????!!!) The ship Grecale picked up 600 immigrants from two rafts and is headed toward Trapani, Sicily with them. Read More 

from the Giornale di Sicilia:
249 African immigrants on an old fishing boat were saved last night by the Italian coast guard ship Dattilo which was sent to pick them up after Roman authorities received an emergency satellite cell phone call from the foundering fishing boat. They were 200 nautical miles east of Sicily but within  Read More 

A merchant ship saved 26 people off a half sunken raft miles off the Libyan coast but survivors say 80 people were lost at sea yesterday.

Remember my blog about Yusupha Susso, the young Gambian refugee in Palermo who was shot in the head by a mafioso who wanted to prove he owned the territory the young man and his friends were standing in? Yusupha survived after five days in an induced coma. He speaks five languages, is the son  Read More 

The caption says:
"Yannis Behrakis/REUTERS
Some 500 refugees, not shown, were feared dead after a shipwreck in the Mediterranean."

Why do you think the Daily News used a photo of white people in trouble at sea when the disappeared immigrants were all from African countries? There are plenty of file photos of black immigrants being saved.

Here is the story from the NY Daily News: Read More 

From the Giornale di Sicilia:
They said they left Libya on a rubber raft carrying 130-140 people. 108 f them were rescued by the Ship Aquarius of the SOS Mediterranean non profit group. Two drowned, six bodies were found on the bottom of the raft which had bent into a V shape, disabled, the motor  Read More 

There is a boat carrying 500 immigrant missing in the Mediterranean. The boat left Egypt three days ago and nothing has been heard of them since.
The alarm was given by the Rome-based Eritrean priest Musie Zerai, for years a reference point for immigrants who find themselves in trouble in the Mediterranean sea. A few of the  Read More 

33 immigrants were rescued by the Italian Coast Guard near Noto. According to La Repubblica they were probably Iraqis, Syrians, Afghanis and Somalians who left Turkey four days ago on a merchant ship who were then made to get off the ship and onto a motorboat after midnight last night.
Meanwhile the ship Orion which took aboard 464 immigrants rescued in the Strait of Sicily n four separate rescue operations by the Orion (106) the ship Bettica (118), the motorboats Aquarius (116) and Gaz Victory (124) Read More 

It took all night to process the nearly 900 African immigrants saved from the Mediterranean Sea by the Norwegian ship Siem Pilot. Among them were 138 unaccompanied minors. Four people fell into the sea during the crossing, two were saved, two drowned. Story from La Repubblica.