NOTHING SHORT OF GENOCIDE: 10,000 Migrant Kids Missing in EU

Fate of the migrant kids who don’t drown at sea…

At least 10,000 migrant children may have disappeared in Europe over  the past 24 months, said the EU’s police intelligence unit (Europol).

“We estimate that at least 26,000 unaccompanied children entered Europe last year – children who have risked everything to flee war, persecution and extreme poverty alone. They come from Afghanistan, Syria, Eritrea, Somalia and Iraq, among other places, seeking sanctuary,” said Save the Children’s CEO, earlier this month.

On Friday, IOM said an estimated that 55,528 migrants and refugees had crossed the Mediterranean to enter Europe during the first 28 days of 2016 – a rate of nearly 2,000 per day. The daily average is nearly equivalent to the total numbers for the month of January as recently as two years ago.

During the same period IOM has recorded some 244 deaths at sea [global total of 361 fatalities,] as well as at least a dozen more deaths of migrants and refugees who died either after reaching Europe or traveling to a launch point in Turkey. By comparison, total deaths on Mediterranean Sea routes were 12 in 2014 and 82 last year.

Just hours after IOM released its latest statement, 39 more migrants and refugees including 10 children drowned on Saturday trying to cross the Aegean Sea from Turkey to Greece.

In May 2015, Italian authorities warned that about 5,000 children had disappeared from asylum reception centers since the previous summer.

In Sweden, about 1,000 unaccompanied refugee children and teens had gone missing by October last year, within a month of arriving in the southern town of Trelleborg, officials have admitted.

In 2015, a total of 1,047,844 refugees and migrants arrived in Europe [Greece, Bulgaria, Italy, Spain, Malta, as well as Cyprus] including 1,011,712 by sea, with at least 5,394 fatalities recorded globally, said IOM’s Missing Migrants Project.

Severe Weather Events Plague Australian Continent

Australia battered by strong winds, heavy precipitation, deadly flooding, a cyclone, mini-tornado, wildfires… and  country-wide rainfall

Severe weather systems are pummeling multiple regions of Australia, with deadly  flash-flooding in Queensland, a destructive “mini-tornado” in New South Wales, ex-cyclone STAN in Western Australia, damaging heavy rain and flooding in eastern Tasmania, while up to 100 wildfires in western Tasmania consume about 75,000 hectares.

Cyclone STAN made landfall about 120 km northeast of Port Hedland, early Sunday morning, reported the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM).

The Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) said a unique set of weather patterns were responsible for the nation-wide wet weather event, not expected to be repeated anytime soon. [ABC]

“It’s quite unusual to see this sort of pattern develop right across that broad section of states,” BoM meteorologist told the ABC.

“It is unlikely we would see the same extent again like what we have seen in the past few days.

“This was a unique weather set up.”

In southeast NSW, destructive winds during thunderstorms destroyed several homes at Forbes Creek, about an hour east of Canberra.

Storms lashed South Australia and Victoria on Saturday, cutting power to homes and businesses and causing flash flooding in multiple areas, while in the Northern Territory, a weak monsoon dumped up to 100mm of rain in some areas, causing numerous road closures in Darwin.

Storms also wreaked havoc on Sydney and other parts of New South Wales on Saturday, with major roads flooded and power out several regions.

Floodwaters in southern Queensland killed a man near Bundaberg.