Mediterranean

Authored by Soren Kern via The Gatestone Institute,

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has drawn a storm of criticism for statements he made about war-torn Libya this week, which included discussion of UK investment opportunities only after Libyans "clear the dead bodies away."  He made the comments while describing his August visit to the North African country at a Conservative party conference Tuesday night, which drew a smattering of laughter from the audience.

Authored by Soeren Kern via The Gatestone Institute,

While Europe's economy and capital markets have been spared any major shocks in the past year, and in fact European GDP has been on a surprisingly resilient uptrend in recent quarters led higher by the relentless German export-growth dynamo (courtesy of the very, very low Deutsche Mark and a lot of broke Greeks), an old and recurring problem has re-emerged, one which threatens the stability and cohesion of the European Union itself: the latest surge of refugees which, arriving mostly from North Africa in recent months, has made Italy its primary landfall target resulting in a surge in migra

In the latest shot across the bow by Italy in Europe's latest refugee crisis, BBC and AP report that the Italian Coast Guard has impounded a German NGO migrant rescue boat and is questioning its crew on the isle of Lampedusa, amid a growing dispute over Italy's code of conduct for handling migrants at sea. Lampedusa is a tiny Italian island near North Africa which has struggled to house boatloads of migrants in recent years.