News Round-Up In Brief

International News

• Mexican authorities have uncovered several mass graves with a total of 116 bodies in pits near the US border,  many of them migrants apparently on their way north including some from Central America. Reports indicate that the country’s violent Zeta and Gulf drug cartels have begun abducting passengers on buses in the area, and a total of 17 suspects had been detained in connection with the killings. As a result, the U.S. State Department yesterday issued a new travel warning for the states of Tamaulipas, Nuevo León and San Luis Potosi. This has further fueled discussions of the region as a “failed state.”

• More than 250 people, including women and children, were missing after their boat capsized off the coast of the Italian island of Lampedusa in the worst shipwreck since thousands of migrants began traveling to Italy because of the unrest in North Africa. Some 48 were rescued by Italian authorities, and three were saved by a fishing boat, but 20 deaths were confirmed and at least 130 people are unaccounted-for. Watch a video of the search for survivors here.

• In Libya, African migrants claim that they were abducted and forced to fight with Gaddafi’s forces.  According to one Ghanaian worker, “They asked us why we were trying to leave the country and that we must stay to fight for when the Americans come.”

News Round Up In-Brief

International News:

• A boat from Libya carrying more than 200 migrants, most of them sub-Saharan Africans, capsized on Wednesday off the Italian island of Lampedusa and more than 150 are still missing.

• A hastily built refugee center in Italy is an example of the logistical challenges that Europe faces as thousands of immigrants flee the unrest in North Africa.

US News:

• Officials in California shut down a “maternity tourism” house where, they say, Chinese women paid tens of thousands of dollars to stay and deliver.

• Arizona’s Republican-controlled Senate rejected five anti-immigration bills in one day.