Theresa Maggio

From today's La Repubblica:
Merchant ship and Italian Coast Guard ships carried 998 immigrants toward Italian shores this morning. They had left from the Egyptian coast. The Coast Guard ship Peluso brought 342 to safety at Augusta, Sicily, they were many men, women and children. The immigrants who landed at Augusta had gone to sea squashed  Read More 

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 

Some of the refugees spent fur days at sea in an open raft. It bent in the middle, shaped like a V, many fell into the water and drowned, including a newborn baby.
From the Guardiam:
"A newborn baby is among 99 people believed to have drowned in two separate shipwrecks off the Libyan coast  Read More 

From a story in La Repubblica this afternoon by MANUELA MODICA:
Italian government ships picked up and brought to Sicily 703 immigrants rescued at sea. 454 arrived at the port of Pozzallo along  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.

From this morning's La Repubblica.

Residents of La Kalsa, the ancient Arab-founded neighborhood of old Palermo and several businessmen helped a burglar pursued by police to escape. The police were encircled by the crowd and the thief got away with 10,000 euros he and three others had just robbed from a market  Read More 

A great review in the The Guardian of the British Museum's show, Sicily: Culture and Conquest.

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