Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Rescue could spark showdown with government after order not to bring migrants to Italy
An Italian charity ship has rescued about 50 people from a rubber boat off the coast of Libya, prompting Rome to warn it is ready to stop private vessels “once and for all” from bringing rescued migrants to Italy.
The interior minister, Matteo Salvini, has repeatedly declared Italian waters closed to NGO rescue vessels and has left several of them stranded at sea in the past in an attempt to force the rest of Europe to take in more asylum seekers.
European commission combats ‘untruths’ over issue after row with Hungary’s Viktor Orbán
The European commission has declared the migration crisis over, as it sharpened its attack on “fake news” and “misinformation” about the issue.
Frans Timmermans, the European commission’s first vice-president, said: “Europe is no longer experiencing the migration crisis we lived in 2015, but structural problems remain.”
Report says aid to displaced people in Africa undermined by Home Office approach to asylum seekers and refugees
The UK government’s migration policy is “disconnected and incoherent” and involves the pitting of one government department against another, a report by MPs has said.
The international development committee (IDC) urged the government to double the number of vulnerable refugees offered resettlement in Britain, up to 10,000 a year.
Fighting between UN-backed GNA and Libyan National Army over field closed since December
Fighting has broken out over the future of Libya’s largest oil field, as forces loyal to the UN-recognised Tripoli-based government battle Libyan National Army (LNA) forces led by Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, the leading figure in fractured Libya’s east.
Al-Sharara field, 560 miles south of Tripoli, is capable of producing 315,000 barrels of crude a day – about a third of Libya’s total current output. But it has been closed by the Libyan National Oil Corporation (NOC) since December when the installation was seized by local tribes demanding the Tripoli government did more to lift the area out of poverty.
Mustafa Sanalla says specialist unit needed to end repeated seizures of oil assets by militias
The head of Libya’s national oil company has said he wants to set up a national force armed with surveillance to protect the country’s petroleum assets after repeated seizures of oil installations by militias.
Mustafa Sanalla, the chairman of the National Oil Corporation (NOC), said the force would require an annual budget of $10m (£7.6m) and be under the control of the UN-recognised government. But the force could include members of the Libyan National Army (LNA) headed by Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, the dominant figure in Libya’s east, he added.
Human Rights Watch accuses EU institutions of sustaining network of ‘inhuman and degrading’ migrant detention centres
The EU’s support for Libya’s anti-migrant policies is contributing to a cycle of “extreme abuse”, including arbitrary detention, torture, sexual violence, extortion and forced labour.
According to a report by Human Rights Watch, who interviewed 66 migrants and asylum seekers in Libya last year, EU institutions and member states are continuing to sustain a network of detention centres characterised by “inhuman and degrading” conditions where the risk of abuse is rife.
The vessel left Libya two days ago and started sinking after 10 to 11 hours at sea
About 117 migrants who left Libya in a rubber dinghy two days ago are unaccounted for, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has said, after three people were rescued from the sinking vessel in the Mediterranean.
“The three survivors told us they were 120 when they left Garabulli, in Libya, on Thursday night. After 10 to 11 hours at sea (the boat) started sinking and people started drowning,” IOM spokesman Flavio Di Giacomo said.
Political process is being sabotaged by those who believe conflict is only option, says UN special envoy
Failure to hold a national reconciliation conference in Libya could open the path to those who want a military solution to the country’s divisions, Ghassan Salamé, the UN special envoy has warned.
The conference, which was due to be held this month, is intended to be a precursor to presidential and parliamentary elections this spring designed to end the splits that have paralysed the country ever since the ousting and killing of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
Filippo Grandi calls on rich countries to give proper funding for developing nations that host people fleeing conflict
The head of the UN refugee agency has said he too would do “anything” to escape if he was stuck in a squalid refugee camp, as he called on the world’s wealthy nations to properly fund services in developing countries.
Speaking to reporters after meeting the Egyptian president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, Filippo Grandi, the high commissioner for refugees, said countries are not getting enough recognition for hosting refugees, and that he would campaign for Cairo to receive more bilateral development aid to support its efforts.
More than one in 10 people travelling through the region are taken, as smugglers boost dwindling returns by preying on people for ransom, survey finds
More than 15% of refugees travelling north through the Horn of Africa were kidnapped during their journey last year, according to what is believed to be one of the most comprehensive surveys of migration journeys.
Researchers from the Mixed Migration Centre (MMC), who conducted 11,150 interviews across 20 countries and seven migration routes, warned that kidnappings may be increasing and identified people travelling through the Horn of Africa to north Africa and Europe as the most vulnerable.
The outlook is bleak for key countries including Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Libya
Just over eight years ago, Tunisian fruit vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in a bitter one-man protest outside a government office against the government. Within hours, demonstrators took to the streets of his small town, Sidi Bouzid. By the time he died in hospital just overtwo weeks later, protests had spread across the country, would soon topple the president and spill beyond Tunisia, in a regional convulsion dubbed the Arab Spring.
Putin 'is planting troops and missiles in eastern Libya in bid to seize control of the biggest illegal immigration route to Europe', UK intelligence fears Russian president Vladimir Putin is planting troops and weapons in Libya to establish a strategic stronghold against the west, intelligence chiefs say. Prime Minister Theresa May has been warned that the country will become Putin's 'new Syria ' by using it as a base for missiles.
ON BOARD OPEN ARMS, Mediterranean: A woman and a boy adrift in the Mediterranean died just hours before help reached their damaged dinghy, Spanish rescuers said on Tuesday after finding a second woman alive in the vessel, which had been carrying migrants towards Europe. A rescue boat operated by the Spanish charity Proactiva Open Arms, with a Reuters photographer aboard, went to help the three migrants, stranded about 80 nautical miles off Libya's coast, but found two already dead.
A child aboard a rubber dinghy off the Libyan coast is helped by rescuers aboard the Open Arms aid vessel. A rescue boat transporting 60 migrants who were rescued in the waters off Libya is on its way to Barcelona today after Italy and Malta both denied port to the vessel Saturday.
An online story falsely claims a federal appeals court ordered former President Barack Obama to pay $400 million in "restitution" to the United States for money supposedly lost in a transaction with "hard-liners" in Iran. The Daily World Update article cites a nonexistent West Texas Federal Appeals Court for the 33rd District; there is no federal appeals court in Texas.
More than 30 migrants died and 200 were rescued after their boats foundered off Libya's western coast, the Libyan navy said. The coastguard conducted two rescue operations off the city of Garabulli, 60 kilometres east of Tripoli, spokesman Colonel Abu Ajila Abdelbarri said.
Altogether eight migrants drowned and dozens are missing on Saturday off the Libyan coast while attempting to reach Europe, according to the Libyan coast guards. "The eight bodies are among the 120 or 130 people who were on a rubber boat," said Colonel Fathi al-Rayani, commander of the coast guard of Garabulli city, 60 km east of Tripoli.
President Trump ordered the Justice Department to probe alleged information leaks by U.S. officials regarding the deadly concert bombing investigation here after British authorities announced Thursday they would stop sharing intelligence due to leaks of confidential and sensitive details about the case. "I am asking the Department of Justice and other relevant agencies to launch a complete review of this matter, and if appropriate, the culprit should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law," Trump said in a statement released by the White House.
Montana Republican congressional candidate Greg Gianforte was accused of physically assaulting a reporter on the campaign trail on Wednesday, the eve of a special election to fill the state's lone... You don't have to actually read President Donald Trump's proposed budget to know that it offers some overdue fiscal discipline on a federal government ... (more)