MUSIC NEWS: It takes a lot to get Pink Floyd back together for anything, and while there are no signs of any music collaborations, the three surviving members have at least joined forces to release a statement on behalf of cause they’ve long been supporters of. 

Two Eritrean babies born prematurely on the migrant voyage from Africa to Europe are being treated at a hospital in Palermo, Sicily after being rescued at sea with thousands of other migrants.

One of the world's most wanted people-smugglers has been arrested.

It began with the creation of the catch-all concept (a legal freak) of a migrant’, which obscures the difference, central to the law, between economic and political migration, between people escaping poverty and people driven from their homes by war.

Up to 50 migrants went missing after a large dinghy sank in the Mediterranean, Sea Italian rescuers said yesterday, while more than 1,500 were picked up from other vessels over a 24-hour period.

Italian coastguard ships and vessels from a multi-nation naval mission and humanitarian organisations rescued at least 2,900 migrants yesterday from 21 boats launched by smugglers from Libyan shores, authorities said.

Pope Francis said yesterday that the mistreatment of migrants who are escaping war and injustice “makes one cry”, as he visited the northern Italian city of Turin, stopping to pray before the shroud that some Christians believe is Jesus’ burial cloth.

CHINA: Rules making it easier to file lawsuits in China have led to concerns over frivolous claims, such as one in which a man says actress Zhao Wei stared at him too intensely through his TV set.

Naval Service flagship LÉ Eithne has saved more migrants’ lives after picking up the occupants of a small fibreglass boat who had run out of food, water and fuel five days into an attempted crossing of the Mediterranean Sea.

At 9 am this morning, the LÉ EITHNE successfully located and rescued a small craft with 12 persons on board which was in distress 30 miles north of Lampedusa, the largest of the Italian Pelagie Islands.

Europe Correspondent Ann Cahill reflects on recent political responses to the crisis of migrant voyages on the Mediterranean and how inaction has added to the rising death toll.

At least 3,500 refugees drowned close to European shores in 2014, but the EU shows no willingness to change the very policies that have led to this crisis, writes Aurélie Ponthieu.

It may be twinned with Waterford, but the Maltese military’s ‘snub’ of an offer to take the naval vessel LÉ Aoife free of charge has angered Cork county councillors.

Inchydoney in West Cork has been voted the best beach in the country for the second year in a row.

More than 300 people probably died this week after attempting to reach Italy from Libya on four separate boats in stormy weather, the UN refugee agency said after speaking to a handful of survivors.

Rome’s homeless are about to get some TLC.

TWO THINGS I pleasurably waste a lot of time on are property supplements and travel websites.

Just this weekend Tunisian coastguards intercepted 90 migrants fleeing Libya in a makeshift boat bound for the Italian island of Lampedusa. Those unfortunate people are just a tiny proportion of the hundreds of thousands trying to reach countries where there is some prospect of living beyond crushing poverty or oppression. That they are willing to take such terrible risks and run a gauntlet of exploitation, kidnapping, and preying criminality is an indication of their desperation.

Pope Francis has criticised abortion as evidence of a “throwaway culture” that wastes people as well as food, saying such a mentality is a threat to peace.

Dozens of asylum-seekers on a boat that sank near the Italian coast last month with the loss of 366 lives were raped and tortured in Libya before starting their journey, the police said yesterday.

Over the past few weeks, Italy has been back at the heart of events.

More than 700 migrants have been rescued from waters near Sicily in less than 24 hours, according to the Italian coastguard.

Italy’s navy rescued about 370 migrants in the waters between Sicily and Libya yesterday as the government deployed ships, helicopters, and drones to help avert further shipwrecks that have already drowned hundreds this month.

Lampedusa casts shame on us all

Syrian refugees who survived a boat capsize off Malta in the latest disaster in the Mediterranean said yesterday they were fired on by “militiamen” as they set out on their perilous journey from Libya.

A ship brought 143 survivors, mostly Syrians, from a capsized smugglers’ boat to Malta today.

Malta’s prime minister said 27 people are confirmed dead after the capsizing of a migrant ship off the Sicilian island of Lampedusa.

A boat carrying an estimated 200 migrants has capsized off the Italian island of Lampedusa where a shipwreck last week left more than 300 dead.

Italian divers have recovered more bodies from the wreck of a smugglers’ ship that sank off the tiny island of Lampedusa, raising the death toll to 250.

Divers began the recovery of dozens of migrants’ bodies yesterday from a boat that sank last week off the coast of Sicily in one of the worst such disasters to hit people fleeing violence, poverty and oppression in Africa.

An Italian government minister born in Africa watched wordlessly today as soldiers wearing face masks carried body bags containing migrants from her continent who perished when a fishing boat sank within sight of the tiny island of Lampedusa.

Divers are resuming the search for bodies from a fiery shipwreck of a fishing boat packed with 500 migrants from Eritrea.

Italy’s plea for help from fellow member states of the European Union to deal with the arrival of refugees to its southern shores must not go unheeded.

Divers are battling with choppy waters in the search for dozens of migrants believed to have drowned after their rickety boat caught fire and sank off the coast of the southern Italian island of Lampedusa.

A ship carrying African migrants to Europe has caught fire and capsized off the southern Italian island of Lampedusa, killing at least 114 people, including two pregnant women, with 150 still missing.

At least 50 people have drowned after a boat carrying 500 migrants to Italy sank in the Mediterranean.

Pope Francis is forgoing his bulletproof Popemobile for his upcoming trip to Brazil for the Catholic Church’s youth festival.

Pope Francis abandoned his bullet-proof popemobile and instead used a borrowed open-topped Fiat in his first pastoral trip outside of Rome.

The pope has attacked what he calls the “globalisation of indifference” that greets migrants who risk their lives trying to reach a better life in Europe.

Dozens of people are missing and one body has been recovered after a migrant boat sank off a small Mediterranean island near Italy.

ALMOST 2,000 people arrived by boat on the Italian island of Lampedusa from Libya and Tunisia over the weekend, the UN refugee agency has said.

Italian coastguards have rescued more than 300 refugees fleeing Libya on an overcrowded boat that had been drifting for more than 36 hours.

MORE than two dozen African migrants trying to reach Italy from Libya died in the hold of a rickety boat so packed with people that the migrants could not get out as they struggled to breathe, Italian media and coast guard officials said yesterday after the bodies were found below decks.