A rescue ship with 629 migrants on board that is on its way to Spain has become a "symbol of the failure of the European Union," the head of the Spanish branch of Doctors without Borders (MSF) which helps operate the vessel said on Thursday.
Italy's far-right interior minister Matteo Salvini suggested Thursday that hundreds of migrants aboard a rescue convoy heading for Spain were on a "cruise", as an NGO condemned their plight as a symbol of the failure of the EU.
The sunken wreck of a long-lost Second World War submarine, thought to contain the bodies of 71 servicemen sealed inside its airtight chambers, has been found by divers off the coast of Sardinia.
Italy's navy said Monday that work to salvage a sunken trawler stuffed with the corpses of migrants was progressing but that the wreck would not be brought to port before next month.
Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has stepped up his war of words with Brussels by comparing the European Union to the orchestra that kept on playing as the Titanic sunk to the bottom of the Atlantic.
UPDATED: Two cruise companies whose passengers were among the victims of a deadly attack on a Tunis museum on Thursday suspended stopovers in the city.
The man who piloted nearly 770 illegal Syrian migrants aboard the Blue Sky M cargo ship towards Italy has described how he became the "captain" of the human trafficking vessel, according to Italian media.
People smugglers likely raked in more than $1.0 million from the hundreds of desperate migrants crammed into just one of the "ghost ships" abandoned off the coast of Italy this week, the International Organization for Migration said on Friday.
Hundreds of mostly Syrian refugees rescued by a cruise liner were refusing on Friday to disembark at Cyprus's main port, demanding instead to be taken to Italy, the cruise company said.
The US cargo ship MV Cape Ray left the Spanish port of Rota on Wednesday and headed for the Calabrian port of Gioia Tauro, where it will load Syrian chemical weapons materials to be destroyed.
Salvage operators on Friday said the Costa Concordia cruise ship, which crashed two years ago off Italy with the loss of 32 lives, would be towed away by June and named the ports where wrecked liner could be taken.
Cruise company Costa Crociere said on Thursday it had signed a contract for a special ship used to lift oil platforms as a possible way of raising the wrecked Costa Concordia liner next year.
Salvage workers will attempt to raise Italy's Costa Concordia cruise ship on Monday, weather permitting, in an unprecedented operation costing more than €600 million, officials said.
The trial of Italy's Costa Concordia cruise ship captain Francesco Schettino is set to get under way on Wednesday, with survivors of the 2012 nighttime disaster and relatives of the 32 victims expected to attend.
The European cruise ship business grew by three percent in 2012 despite the eurozone crisis and the Costa Concordia
liner disaster, a trade report said on Tuesday.
