Theresa Maggio

Five overloaded, unseaworthy ex-fishing boats loaded with would-be immigrants were saved from danger near the Libyan shores . The Italian Navy had received a distress call via satellite phone warning that three boats were in need of rescue. The ships sent found five boats full of people and rescued all of them, taking them to Lampedusa and Porto Empedocle in Sicily. Read More 

From La Repubblica/Palermo edition of 22 March 2015.
A restaurant owner has given up and decided to move out of the Vucciria market area and night life hub of Palermo after a bonfire on the Eve of Saint Joseph's Feast (March 19) practically destroyed his business and put his customers and staff in danger.  Read More 

By June of 2014, 59,880 migrants had landed on Italy's coast, more than arrived in all of 2011, and Sicily got 53,000 of them. All of them were treacherous voyages. Thousands of minors arrived without any family. They paid an average of $1,600 to board a broken-down fishing boat packed with 300 people, and no life vests. Life vests take up room. Read More 

Twenty-nine people died of exposure to the cold on a rescue from the sea. They died while being rushed to Lampedusa, the Sicilian island closest to Africa. They were rescued from some of the worst conditions at sea, waves twenty feet high.

Update: here is the story in the NYT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/10/ Read More 

I took this picture back in 1986. Giuliana is in the mountains in Palermo province, a beautiful spot. This church, to which a lady has attached her wash line, was church then a mosque ( with the addition of the dome, then back to a church again.

http://www.casateatromassimo.it/webcam/ctm_snap.jpg

Above is the link to the live web cam of the famous Teatro Massimo, on whose steps the last scene of the Godfather III was filmed. A new picture appears every minute.

Archeogeologist Dr. Francesca Mercadante and her husband, Dr. Pippo Locascio, of Partanna-Mondello, have dicovered an intact megalithic Bronze Age village within Palermo's northern city limits, on the littoral below the cliffs of Capo Gallo between the seaside villages of Sferracavallo and Mondello.

Today a thumb drive could contain it all.

The Palermo city archives off Via Maqueda is an experience in itself. It was designed like the inside of a cargo ship. It was recently spruced up and the staff offer guided tours of the collections. Thanks to Facebook group Palermo in Bianco e Nero for this photo. This shot is taken from the  Read More 

From one of my favorite blogs, Amo Palermo. The author walks around the city center with a camera and snaps pictures of buildings and streets undergoing improvements. It's a blog with a lot of positive energy. The author now has a regular column in the newspaper Il Corriere .

Much of Palermo's historic center, the largest in Europe, is walled up like this window in what used to be a lovely art deco building above the heads of the market merchants. Some such buildings house newly-arrived clandestine immigrants.