Greek immigration crisis spawns shanty towns and squats - Telegraph
Greece's inability to tackle a crisis in illegal immigration has left thousands living in shanty towns and squatting in the heart of Athens.
Greek islands struggle with daily arrival of illegal migrants -
Greek islands in the Aegean Sea, known to British tourists as hedonistic summer playgrounds, are struggling to deal with a daily influx of hundreds of desperate migrants. The bodies of those who do not survive the crossing from Turkey also wash up on the shores of the islands.
Malta casts doubts on surviving Eritreans' claims :
Valletta, Malta - Malta's army chief admitted Saturday his soldiers provided fuel to five Eritrean migrants who were stranded at sea but cast doubts on their claims that 73 people died on board the same dinghy. The army sent a patrol boat to the area to offer assistance but according to army chief Carmel Vassallo the immigrants adamantly refused to be taken to Malta.
He told a news conference that the four men and one woman were looking "relatively fresh" and the dinghy appeared to be "good as new."
An Italian coast guard patrol on Thursday rescued five Eritreans, found suffering from dehydration and heat exhaustion, and floating in a rubber dinghy south of the Italy's Mediterranean islet of Lampedusa.
The five said that 73 of their fellow would-be immigrants died at sea after they sailed from Libya 20 days ago. But the story has been mired in conflicting versions, amid a potential diplomatic row between Italy and Malta.
When the dinghy was spotted for the first time by an airplane that forms part of the EU's Frontex mission it was in the Libyan search- and-rescue area and had only five people on board, Malta's Foreign Minister Tonio Borg said.
Despite the incident, Borg said Malta has no intention of reducing its search-and-rescue zone.
He told the news conference: "Our search-and-rescue zone is not for sale," though he did not rule out dialogue with Italy about the management of this zone.
His Italian counterpart Franco Frattini told the newspaper Corriere della Sera that it is clear Malta lacks the instruments, such as number of boats and crews, to control such a wide area.
Italy: Illegal immigrants top one million, says charity
Despite a tougher stance on immigration in Italy, immigrants have not been deterred from entering the country illegally. The Catholic relief organisation Caritas says the number of illegal immigrants now living in Italy has topped one million....
Opposition outcry as Italy legalises vigilante patrols
Silvio Berlusconi's government, which has already put several thousand soldiers on the streets of Italy, will tomorrow legalise vigilante patrols and set out the guidelines under which they will operate.
The plans prompted an outcry from opposition politicians and police unions, but got a mixed reception from Italy's mayors, who must decide whether they want law enforcement volunteers in their towns. An overwhelming majority of those in favour run cities in the north, where the anti-immigrant Northern League has long argued for wider use of vigilantes.
The interior minister, Roberto Maroni, a member of the Northern League, denied that the plan was to introduce vigilantism to Italy: "The decree does not create [vigilante] patrols; it regulates them."
After rejecting the scheme, Rome's mayor, Gianni Alemanno, a former neo-fascist, appears to have embraced it. The head of his council's security committee, Fabrizio Santori, said vigilantes in flurorescent jackets would be deployed in parks, outside schools and at tourist sites.
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