MINEO: What was once Europe’s biggest migrant reception centre, in Mineo in Sicily, officially closed on Tuesday in the presence of its biggest critic, far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini.
"We’re saving quite a bit of money, we’re working to find new jobs for the centre’s ex-workers, but Sicily, Catania and Mineo cannot base their future on immigration," Salvini said as he shut the centre.
Salvini said the future was "in smaller and more controlled centres", after the final inhabitants were removed last week to be sent to another centre in Calabria. About 50 former workers at the centre and unionists protested ahead of Salvini’s arrival, handing a protest banner reading "today we celebrate the funeral of Mineo".
The reception centre, a former housing complex for the US military that resembles an American suburb, is now guarded by Italian troops blocking access under a roasting Sicilian sun.
At its peak in 2014, Mineo housed more than 4,100 people. Its population then steadily dropped and when anti-migrant Salvini and the populist Five Star Movement came to power in June last year, it housed 2,500.
Veteran cricket journalist Sharda Ugra said the sport is used as a vehicle for a muscular nationalism
The council launched an online campaign calling for USC to reinstate Tabassum’s invitation to speak
The UAE saw record rainfall with 254 mm falling in less than 24 hours in Al Ain, a city on the UAE-Oman border
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese singled Guerot out for praise on Tuesday
The bill passed a vote in Britain’s parliament with 383 in favour and 67 against
The Supreme Court has previously refused to accept two formal apologies from Ramdev and his firm’s co-founder...
