Italian navy patrol ships rescued more than 3,500 migrants, including hundreds of women and children, from boats coming from North Africa, authorities said on Saturday, while Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi called for help from the EU.
The rescues, which the coast guard said have been going on since Friday evening, are the latest in a seemingly endless succession as the chronic migrant crisis in the southern Mediterranean has picked up this year.
A total of 3,612 migrants from Syria and North Africa were picked up from 11 boats and taken to ports in Sicily and the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa, a coast guard spokesman said.
About 43,000 people have crossed from North Africa to Italy so far this year, the same amount as in the whole of last year, the coast guard said.
That leaves the annual total set to surpass the 60,000 who made the trip in 2011, when the Arab Spring revolutions loosened border controls, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees’ (UNHCR).
The near daily arrivals of migrant boats, mostly leaving from ports in Libya, was an issue in Italy in the European parliamentary elections on Sunday last week.
The anti-immigrant Northern League, which had lost much of its support over the past two years due to corruption scandals and leadership changes, recovered to win more than 6 percent of the vote.
Renzi said in an interview with several European newspapers on Saturday that the EU and the UN were not doing enough to help Italy handle the surge of migrants.
“Europe has to call on the United Nations to intervene in Libya and more generally it must show a capacity to manage the immigration phenomenon,” he was quoted as saying in the Italian daily La Stampa.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not