Italy
2 Italian air force planes collide mid-air, killing pilots
Two Italian air force pilots were killed Tuesday during an exercise when the light aircraft they were flying collided mid-air and crashed to the ground, Italy’s air force said in a statement.
The two U-208 aircraft crashed near the Guidonia military airport, located around 25 kilometers (15 miles) northeast of Rome. No injuries on the ground were reported.
Also Read: Philippine plane crash kills 2, another carrying 6 missing
One of the planes crashed into a car on a narrow residential street lined with apartment buildings; the other landed in a field.
Premier Giorgia Meloni expressed her condolences to the pilots’ families and colleagues.
Deadly shipwreck: How it happened, and unanswered questions
“Italy here we come!” cheered the young men, in Urdu and Pashto, as they filmed themselves standing on a boat sailing in bright blue waters.
They were among around 180 migrants — Afghans, Pakistanis, Syrians, Iranians, Palestinians, Somalis and others — who left Turkey hoping for a better, or simply safer, life in Europe.
Days later, dozens of them were dead. So far, 70 bodies have been recovered from the Feb. 26 shipwreck near the small beach town of Steccato di Cutro, but only 80 survivors have been found, indicating that the death toll was higher. On Sunday, firefighter divers spotted a further body in the Ionian Sea and were working to bring it ashore, state TV said.
The tragedy has highlighted the lesser-known migration route from Turkey to Italy. It also brought into focus hardening Italian and European migration policies, which have since 2015 shifted away from search and rescue, prioritizing instead border surveillance. Questions are also being asked of the Italian government about why the coast guard wasn’t deployed until it was too late.
Also Read: Migrant boat breaks up off Italian coast, killing nearly 60
Based on court documents, testimony from survivors and relatives and statements by authorities, the AP has reconstructed what is known of the events that led to the shipwreck and the questions left unanswered.
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THE FATEFUL JOURNEY
In the early hours of Wednesday, Feb. 22, the migrants — including dozens of families with small children — boarded a leisure boat on a beach near Izmir following a truck journey from Istanbul and a forest crossing by foot.
They set out from the shore. But just three hours into their voyage, the vessel suffered an engine failure. Still in high seas, an old wooden gulet — a traditional Turkish style of boat — arrived as a replacement.
The smugglers and their assistants told the migrants to hide below deck as they continued on their journey west. Without life vests or seats, they crammed on the floor, going out for air, or to relieve themselves, only briefly. Survivors said the second boat also had engine problems, stopping several times along the way.
Three days later, on Saturday, Feb. 25, at 10:26 p.m. a European Union Border and Coast Guard plane patrolling the Ionian sea spotted a boat heading toward the Italian coast. The agency, known as Frontex, said the vessel “showed no signs of distress” and was navigating at 6 knots, with “good” buoyancy.
Frontex sent an email to Italian authorities at 11:03 p.m. reporting one person on the upper deck and possibly more people below, detected by thermal cameras. No lifejackets could be seen. The email also mentioned that a satellite phone call had been made from the boat to Turkey.
In response to the Frontex sighting, the case was classified as an “activity of the maritime police”. Italy’s Guardia di Finanza, or financial police, which also has a border and customs role, dispatched two patrols to “intercept the vessel.”
As the Turkish boat approached Italy’s Calabrian coast on Saturday evening, some of the migrants on the boat were allowed to message family, to inform them of their imminent arrival and release the 8,000-euro fee that had been agreed upon with the smugglers.
The men navigating the boat told the anxious passengers they needed to wait a few more hours for disembarkation, to avoid getting caught, according to survivors’ testimony to investigators.
At 3:48 a.m. on Sunday, Feb. 26, the financial police vessels returned to base, without having reached the boat due to bad weather. The police contacted the coast guard to ask if they had any vessels out at sea “in case there was a critical situation” according to communication obtained by the Italian ANSA agency and confirmed by AP. The coast guard replied they did not. “OK, it was just to inform you,” a police officer said before hanging up.
Just minutes later, at around 4 a.m., local fishermen on Italy’s southern coast spotted lights in the darkness. People were waving their cell phone flashlights desperately from atop a boat stuck on a sand bank.
The suspected smugglers grabbed black tubes, possibly life jackets, and jumped into the water to save themselves, according to survivors. Waves continued smashing into the vessel until it suddenly ripped apart. The sound was similar to that of an explosion, survivors said. People fell into the frigid water, trying to grab onto anything they could. Many could not swim.
Italian police arrived on the scene at 4:30 a.m., the same time that the coast guard says it received the first emergency calls related to the boat. It took the coast guard another hour to get there. By then, bodies were already being pulled out of the water with people screaming for help while others attempted to resuscitate the victims.
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THE YOUNG VICTIMS
There were dozens of young children on board the boat. Almost none survived. The body of a 3-year-old was recovered Saturday.
Among those who lived was a Syrian father and his eldest child, but his wife and three other children did not. The body of his youngest, age 5, was still missing four days later.
Shahida Raza, an athlete from Pakistan, died in the tragedy. She had hoped to reach Europe so that she could eventually bring her disabled son for the medical treatment he could not access back home.
One Afghan man drove down from Germany, searching for his 15-year-old nephew who had contacted family saying he was in Italy. But the boy also died before setting foot on land.
The uncle asked that his name, and that of his nephew not be published as he had yet to inform the boy’s father.
The baby-faced teenager had shared a video with his family during his sea voyage, with apparently good weather.
His mother had died two years ago, and with the return of the Taliban to power, the family fled to Iran. The boy later continued to Turkey from where he tried multiple times to cross into the EU.
“Europe is the only place where at least you can be respected as a human being,” he said. “Everyone knows that it is 100% dangerous, but they gamble with their lives because they know if they make it they might be able to live.”
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THE AFTERMATH
Prosecutors have launched two investigations — one into the suspected smugglers and another looking at whether there were delays by Italian authorities in responding to the migrant boat.
A Turkish man and two Pakistani men, among the 80 survivors, have been detained, suspected of being smugglers or their accomplices. A fourth suspect, a Turkish national, is on the run.
Particular attention has been focused on why the coast guard was never sent to check on the boat.
A day after the shipwreck, Frontex told AP it had spotted a “heavily overcrowded” boat and reported it to Italian authorities. In a second statement, though, Frontex clarified that only one person had been visible on deck but that its thermal cameras — “and other signs” — indicated there could be more people below.
In an interview with AP, retired coast guard admiral Vittorio Alessandro said the coast guard’s boats are made to withstand rough seas and that they should have gone out. “If not to rescue, at least to check whether the boat needed any assistance.”
Alessandro added that the photos released by Frontex showed the water level was high, suggesting the boat was heavy.
The coast guard said Frontex alerted Italian authorities in charge of “law enforcement,” copying the Italian Coast Guard “for their awareness” only. Frontex said it is up to national authorities to classify events as search and rescue.
“The issue is simple in its tragic nature: No emergency communication from Frontex reached our authorities. We were not warned that this boat was in danger of sinking,” Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni said on Saturday.
“I wonder if there is anyone in this nation who honestly believes that the government deliberately let over 60 people die, including some children,” she added.
Alessandro, however, lamented how over the years the coast guard’s activities — which previously occurred even far out in international waters — have been progressively curtailed by successive governments.
“Rescue operations at sea should not be replaced by police operations. Rescue must prevail,” he said.
In an interview with AP, Eugenio Ambrosi, chief of staff at the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration, stressed the need for a more proactive search and rescue strategy, on a European level.
“We can look and debate whether the (boat) was spotted, not spotted, whether the authorities were called and didn’t respond,” he said. “But we wouldn’t be asking this question if there was a mechanism of search and rescue in the Mediterranean.”
Italy: Migrants paid 8,000 euros each for ‘voyage of death’
Rescue teams pulled more bodies from the sea on Tuesday, bringing the death toll from Italy’s latest migration tragedy to 65, as prosecutors identified suspected smugglers who allegedly charged 8,000 euros (nearly $8,500) for each person making the “voyage of death” from Turkey to Italy.
Authorities delayed a planned viewing of the coffins to allow more time for identification of the bodies, as desperate relatives and friends arrived in the Calabrian city of Crotone in hope of finding their loved ones, some of whom hailed from Afghanistan.
“I am looking for my aunt and her three children,” said Aladdin Mohibzada, adding that he drove 25 hours from Germany to reach the makeshift morgue set up at a sports stadium. He said he had ascertained that his aunt and two of the children died, but that a 5-year-old survived and was being sheltered in a center for minors.
Also Read: Deadly shipwreck in Italy must trigger action to save lives: UN
“We are looking into possibilities to send (the bodies) to Afghanistan, the bodies that are here,” he told The Associated Press outside the morgue. But he complained about a lack of information as authorities scrambled to cope with the disaster. “We are helpless here. We don’t know what we should do.”
At least 65 people, including 14 minors, died when their overcrowded wooden boat slammed into shoals 100 meters (yards) off the shore of Cutro and broke apart early Sunday in rough seas. Eighty people survived, but many more are feared dead since survivors indicated the boat had carried about 170 people when it set off last week from Izmir, Turkey.
Aid groups at the scene have said many of the passengers hailed from Afghanistan, including entire families, as well as from Pakistan, Syria and Iraq. Rescue teams pulled two bodies from the sea on Tuesday, bringing the toll to 65, police said.
Also Read: Rescuers find 60th body off Italy after migrant shipwreck
Premier Giorgia Meloni sent a letter to European leaders demanding quick action on the continent’s longstanding migration problem, insisting that migrants must be stopped from risking their lives on dangerous sea crossings.
“The point is, the more people who set off, the more people risk dying,” she told RAI state television late Monday.
Meloni’s right-wing government, which swept elections last year in part on promises to crack down on migration, has concentrated on complicating efforts by humanitarian boats to make multiple rescues in the central Mediterranean by assigning them ports of disembarkation along Italy’s northern coasts. That means the vessels need more time to return to sea after bringing migrants aboard and taking them safely to shore.
But aid groups’ rescue ships don’t normally operate in the area of Sunday’s shipwreck, which occurred off the Calabrian coast in the Ionian Sea. Rather, the aid groups generally operate in the central Mediterranean, rescuing migrants who set off from Libya or Tunisia — not from Turkey in the eastern Mediterranean.
Crotone prosecutor Giuseppe Capoccia confirmed investigators had identified three suspected smugglers, a Turk and two Pakistani nationals. A second Turk is believed to have escaped or died in the wreck.
Italy’s border police said in a statement that organizers of the crossing charged 8,000 euros (around $8,500) each for the “voyage of death.”
Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi pushed back at suggestions that the rescue was delayed or affected by government policy discouraging aid groups from staying at sea to rescue migrants.
The EU border agency Frontex has said its aircraft spotted the boat off Crotone at 10:26 p.m. Saturday and alerted Italian authorities. Italy sent out two patrol vessels, but they had to turn back because of the poor weather.
Piantedosi told a parliamentary committee that the ship ran aground and broke apart at around 5 a.m. Sunday.
“There was no delay,” Piantedosi told Corriere della Sera. “Everything possible was done in absolutely prohibitive sea conditions.”
The Italian Coast Guard issued a statement on Tuesday saying Frontex had indicated that the migrants’ boat was “navigating normally” and that only one person could be seen above deck.
It added that an Italian border police vessel, “already operating in the sea” set out to intercept the migrant boat.
“At about 4:30 a.m., some indications by telephone from subjects on land, relative to a boat in danger a few meters from the coast, reached the Coast Guard,″ the statement said.
At that point, a Carabinieri police boat which had been alerted by border police “informed the Coast Guard about the shipwreck.”
In contrast to similar cases of migrant vessels in distress, “no phone indication ever came from migrants aboard” to the Coast Guard, the statement noted.
Not rarely, migrants aboard a vessel in distress contact Alarm Phone, a humanitarian support hotline which relays indications of boats in trouble in the Mediterranean to maritime authorities.
When briefing lawmakers, the interior minister cited figures supporting Italy’s long-held frustration that fellow European Union nations don’t honor pledges to accept a share of asylum-seeking migrants who reach Italy.
Piantedosi said that while these pledges covered some 8,000 migrant relocations from June last year through this month, only 387 people actually were transferred to other EU nations, with Germany taking in most of them.
Deadly shipwreck in Italy must trigger action to save lives: UN
The UN chief and agencies serving refugees and migrants urgently called for safer travel routes and bolstered rescue operations following the deadly shipwreck that left at least 60 dead on Sunday off the coast of Crotone, Italy.
“Every person searching for a better life deserves safety and dignity,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said. “We need safe, legal routes for migrants and refugees.”
The UN refugee agency (UNCHR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM), in a joint statement, expressed condolences for the victims and called on countries to increase resources and capabilities to effectively meet their responsibilities.
Rescue crews searched by sea and air Monday for the dozens of people believed still missing from a shipwreck off Italy’s southern coast that drove home once again the desperate and dangerous crossings of migrants seeking to reach Europe.
At least 80 people survived Sunday’s shipwreck off the Calabrian coast, but rescue crews recovered 60 bodies, including those of several children and the corpse of a young man Monday morning. Dozens more were feared dead given survivor reports that the ship, which set off from Turkey last week, had carried about 170 people.
“It is unacceptable to witness such horrors, with families and children entrusted to unseaworthy boats,” said Chiara Cardoletti, the UNHCR representative for Italy, the Holy See and San Marino.
The boat had left Turkey, with many passengers coming from Afghanistan and Pakistan. In 2022, people from Turkey accounted for around 15 percent of total arrivals by sea in Italy, the UNHCR said, noting that nearly half of the people arriving along this route were people fleeing Afghanistan.
The agencies said European Union mechanisms for rescue operations are “urgently needed.”
To avoid tragedies like this, Cardoletti said, it is “more necessary than ever before to strengthen the rescue capacity, which is still insufficient.”
Read more: Rescuers find 60th body off Italy after migrant shipwreck
Laurence Hart, director of the IOM Coordination Office for the Mediterranean, said this shipwreck demonstrates how the phenomenon of migration by sea must be tackled by all European nations.
This requires humanitarian support and adopting an approach that considers the multiple drivers that are causing people to flee, she said.
The IOM Missing Migrants Project reported that at least 220 people, including those who perished on Sunday, died or went missing along the central Mediterranean route in 2023.
‘Love doesn’t exist’: Immigrants defy forced marriage abroad
From the day of her birth in Pakistan, Iram Aslam was betrothed to a cousin 17 days older. But to the young woman, who emigrated as a teenager to this Italian farm town on the Po River plain, the cousin felt like a brother. So on a visit to her homeland, she played for time, telling her aunts she wasn’t ready for marriage.
“They did everything possible to make me marry him,″ said Aslam, now 29. She said she told them: ”‘I don’t want to marry him and please don’t ask me anymore.’”
Her family, in both Italy and Pakistan, kept scheming to have her wed a man of their choice — and their caste. Aslam dismissed around 30 potential husbands.
“In the end, I made everyone angry, and no one talks to me anymore,” she said of her relatives in Pakistan.
In two murder trials this month, Italian prosecutors are seeking justice for Pakistani immigrant women allegedly killed because they refused marriages imposed by their parents. The cases highlight differences, often misconstrued as religion-based, between centuries-old immigrants’ cultural traditions and Western values prizing individualism.
Also Read: Nearly 1 million asylum requests in the EU in 2022
“I liked another person, wanted another one,″ Aslam said of her own situation. “But they didn’t want it, because among us, love doesn’t exist.” Love is viewed “as a sin,” she added, her thick, wavy brown hair covered by a multicolored headscarf. She asked that her face not be fully shown for fear of further antagonizing Pakistani neighbors in Guastalla, a town of 15,000 where they are the dominant immigrant community.
To escape marriage-obsessed relatives, Aslam went for a time to live in Germany.
But there was no escape for 18-year-old Saman Abbas.
Like Aslam, she emigrated as a teenager from Pakistan to an Italian farm town, Novellara, 11 kilometers (seven miles) from Guastalla.
In what appears to be an identity card photo taken shortly after her arrival, Abbas’ face is framed by a black hijab, or headscarf. But the young woman quickly embraced Western ways, appearing in social media posts with her hair tumbling out from under a bright red headband. In one, she and her Pakistani boyfriend were shown kissing on a street in the regional capital, Bologna.
According to Italian investigators, that kiss enraged Abbas’ parents, who wanted their daughter to marry a cousin in Pakistan.
Also Read: Italy contributes €3mn to UNHCR for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh
In November, her body was dug up in the ruins of a Novellara farmhouse. She had last been seen alive a few hundred yards away on April 30, 2021, in surveillance camera video as she walked with her parents on the watermelon farm where her father worked. A few days later, her parents caught a flight from Milan to Pakistan.
Abbas had reportedly told her boyfriend she feared for her life, because she refused to be married to an older man in her homeland.
An autopsy revealed a broken neck bone, possibly caused by strangulation.
An uncle and a cousin were extradited from France, and another cousin from Spain. They are now on trial in Reggio Emilia, the provincial capital with jurisdiction over Novellara, accused of Abbas’ murder.
Also indicted is her father, Shabbir Abbas, arrested in his village in eastern Punjab. The whereabouts of her mother, who is also charged, are unknown.
A lawyer for her father, Akhtar Mahmood, told Italian state television that the young woman’s family is innocent. He disputed prosecutors’ allegations, contending that she had wanted to return with her family to Pakistan to flee Western ways.
Asked about Italy’s request for Shabbir Abbas’ extradition, Pakistan’s ambassador to Italy, Ali Javed, told The Associated Press that the Pakistani government would “not hesitate” to do so. However, Italy has no extradition treaty with Pakistan.
Javed blamed “individual ignorance″ for forced marriage, which is illegal in Pakistan.
In 2019, Italy made coercing an Italian citizen or resident into marriage, even abroad, a crime covered under domestic violence laws.
Late this month, police in Spain detained the father of two sisters who were allegedly murdered while visiting family in Pakistan. The women had reportedly refused to have their husbands come to Spain after being forced to marry their cousins.
In the United Kingdom, home to Europe’s largest Pakistani community, the government’s Forced Marriage Unit cautioned that the problem of forced marriage isn’t “specific to one country, religion or culture” and said statistics don’t reflect “the full scale of the abuse” since forced marriage is a “hidden crime.”
Under the Italian justice system, civil plaintiffs can attach lawsuits for damages to criminal trials, and two organizations representing Islamic communities in Italy are among those suing in the Abbas trial.
Other plaintiffs include women’s advocacy organizations.
Tiziana Dal Pra, whose group, Trama delle Terre, promotes intercultural relations, said that while violence surrounding forced marriage “gets interpreted as religious,” what’s really at play is “patriarchal control” of women’s bodies.
In December, a court in the northern city of Brescia convicted and gave five-year prison sentences to three Pakistani immigrants — the parents and older brother of four girls — for beating them and keeping them out of school.
According to court documents, the parents threatened their daughters that if they refused arranged marriages, they would end up like that “girl in Pakistan.”
The court said that threat referred to 25-year-old Sana Cheema, who was slain when she returned from Italy to Pakistan in 2018, allegedly at her parents’ insistence.
By her friends’ accounts, Cheema, who had taken Italian citizenship, loved her life in Brescia, where she worked out at a gym, went out for coffee with girlfriends and danced with them at a disco. She was proud of her job teaching at a driving school in the northern city.
Brescia prosecutors are now trying Cheema’s father and brother in absentia on a novel charge: murder in violation of the political right to marry one’s own choice.
In 2019, a court in Pakistan acquitted the two on murder charges, citing insufficient evidence. But Italy’s justice ministry ruled the Brescia trial could go forward since Pakistan and Italy have no agreement governing cases involving so-called judicial double jeopardy.
Cheema’s family initially told Pakistani authorities that she died of a heart attack the day before she was supposed to fly back to Italy. Two friends testified in Brescia this month that Cheema told them her parents wanted her to marry a cousin in Pakistan.
They also quoted from Facebook messages in which Cheema said her parents had confiscated her passport and phone in Pakistan.
With the Italian Embassy closely following the case, Cheema’s body was exhumed. An autopsy indicated she was likely strangled.
Prosecuting the case in Italy sends the message that “exercising the right of who you want to live with, above all, who you want to marry, is a political right” to be guaranteed “with utmost firmness,” Brescia Prosecutor General Guido Rispoli told the AP.
At the edge of a field near the farmhouse where Saman Abbas’ body was found, mourners have left a stuffed toy squirrel and bunches of flowers at an improvised shrine.
“It will continue to happen, I tell you, that’s how it is,″ Aslam said of violence linked to forced marriage.
What progress has been made with trials like the ones in Reggio Emilia and Brescia isn’t enough, she added: “It’s like salt in flour.”
Migrant boat breaks up off Italian coast, killing nearly 60
A wooden boat crowded with migrants smashed into rocky reefs and broke apart before dawn Sunday off the Italian coast, authorities said. Rescuers recovered nearly 60 bodies, and dozens more people were missing in the rough waters.
Officials feared the death toll could top 100 since some survivors indicated the boat had as many as 200 passengers when it set out from Turkey, United Nations refugee and migration agencies said.
At least 80 people were found alive, including some who reached the shore after the shipwreck just off Calabria’s coastline along the Ionian Sea, the Italian Coast Guard said. One of the agency’s motorboats rescued two men suffering from hypothermia and recovered the body of a boy.
As sundown approached, firefighters said 59 bodies had been found.
One man was taken into custody for questioning after fellow survivors indicated he was a trafficker, state TV said.The boat collided with the reefs in rough, wind-whipped seas. Three big chunks of the vessel ended up on the beach near the town of Steccato di Cutro, where splintered pieces of bright blue wood littered the sand like matchsticks.
“All of the survivors are adults,″ Red Cross volunteer Ignazio Mangione said. ”Unfortunately, all the children are among the missing or were found dead on the beach.” A baby was reported among the dead.
Proposed Italian sea rescue law puts more lives at risk: UN rights chief
UN human rights chief Volker Türk Thursday expressed serious concerns about a proposed law in Italy that could hinder the provision of life-saving assistance by humanitarian search and rescue (SAR) organisations in the Central Mediterranean, resulting in more deaths at sea.
“We all watch with horror the plight of those crossing the Mediterranean, and the desire to end that suffering is profound. But this is simply the wrong way to address this humanitarian crisis,” said Türk. “More people in distress will be made to suffer and more lives risk being lost because timely help is not available if this law is passed.”
“The law would effectively punish both migrants and those who seek to help them. This penalisation of humanitarian actions would likely deter human rights and humanitarian organisations from doing their crucial work,” the high commissioner added.
The proposed law – which was passed by the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian Parliament Wednesday and is scheduled to be considered by the Senate next week – also requires humanitarian rescue ships to head to port immediately after each rescue, foregoing additional rescues even if they are in the immediate vicinity of people in distress.
In the past, SAR vessels carried out multiple rescue operations over days. At the same time, Italy recently designated distant ports of disembarkation for people rescued at sea – sometimes days sailing away from the original rescue site – making it all the more difficult for vessels who may seek to conduct multiple rescues.
“Under international law, a captain is duty-bound to render immediate assistance to people in distress at sea, and states must protect the right to life,” said Türk. “But under this new proposal, a nearby SAR vessel would be obliged to ignore the distress calls of those at sea simply by having already saved others.”
Türk added: “Those left stranded at sea would be forced to endure prolonged exposure to the elements and risk losing their lives. Those who survive face increased delays in accessing adequate medical care and rehabilitation, including for victims of torture, sexual violence and other human rights violations.”
The high commissioner said the proposed law also risked increased interceptions and returns to Libya – a location the UN Human Rights Office repeatedly said cannot be considered a safe port of disembarkation.
Under the proposed law, crews on board the ships must register every person who is planning to ask for international protection. Non-governmental organisations that do not comply with the new rules would be subject to administrative sanctions, and fines and have their vessel seized.
The high commissioner urged the government of Italy to withdraw the proposed law, and to consult civil society groups, in particular search and rescue NGOs, to ensure any proposed legislation complies fully with international human rights law, international refugee law, and other applicable legal frameworks, including the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and the International Convention on Maritime Search and Rescue.
Read more: Greece: 3 dead after boat with migrants hits rocks
5 Yummy Homemade Pizza Recipes for Kids
Pizza which has a long history was first introduced in 997 AD in Gaeta in Italy. Then this food was found in different parts of Central and Southern Italy. Mainly the Italians and emigrants in these regions used to eat Pizza. The ancient Egyptians, Romans, and Greeks used to eat flatbreads with toppings just like pizza. The modern pizza was found in Naples, Italy, in the 18th or early 19th century. Pizza is a very healthy, tasty, and nutritious recipe that you can prepare at home. Let’s find out 5 hearty pizza recipes for kids.
5 Healthy Pizza Recipes for Children
Pizza with Tomato Sauce Recipe
Ingredients
300g flour (white bread), ½ cup flour for dusting, 1 tsp yeast, 1 tbsp olive oil
For the tomato sauce
One tbsp olive oil, 2 garlic cloves ( Chopped), 200ml (passata).
Read More: 5 Yummy Healthy Green Pea Recipes for Kids
For the topping
8 mozzarella pearls, halved a small bunch of fresh basil.
'Introduction of Bangladesh to Italian students to help boost Dhaka, Rome ties'
The Bangladesh mission in Rome recently made a presentation at the Liceo Galileo Galilei School at Macomer in Italy's Sardinia as a part of the First Step (Meet the School) of Embassy Adoption Programme.
Thanking the Bangladesh embassy for introducing the country to the Italian students, Giancarlo Dionisi, prefect of Macomer, and Antonio Onorato Succu, mayor of Macomer, said the initiative would help create greater understanding and bondage between the two friendly countries.
The embassy has been participating in the Diplomacy Education Programme coordinated by Global Action, Italy, since 2021. But this is the first time the mission joined it in person at the adopted school outside Rome.
At the programme, Bangladesh Ambassador to Italy Shameem Ahsan briefed the young learners about the country, its history, Liberation War, culture, economy and achievements.
The programme is a part of the Bangladesh embassy's ongoing public diplomacy drive to project and brand the country positively to the wider audience in Italy.
Read more: Dhaka, Rome eye stronger economic partnership
1 dead, up to 12 missing in landslide on Italian island
Heavy rainfall triggered a massive landslide early Saturday on the southern Italian resort island of Ischia that destroyed buildings and swept parked cars into the sea, leaving at least one person dead and up to 12 missing.
The body of a woman was pulled from the mud, the Naples prefect Claudio Palomba, told a news conference.
With raining continuing to fall, rescuers were working gingerly with small bulldozers to pick through some six to seven meters (yards) of mud and detritus in the search for possible victims. Reinforcements arrived by ferry, including teams of sniffer dogs to help the search efforts.
The force of the mud sliding down the mountainside just before dawn was strong enough to send cars and buses onto beaches and into the sea at the port of Casamicciola, on the north end of the island, which lies off Naples.
Read more: 252 dead as Indonesia earthquake topples homes, buildings, roads
The island received 126 millimeters (nearly five inches) of rain in six hours, the heaviest rainfall in 20 years, according to officials.
Streets were impassable and mayors on the island urged people to stay home. At least 100 people were reported stranded without electricity and water, and about 70 were housed in a community gymnasium.
There was early confusion over the death toll. Vice Premier Matteo Salvini initially said eight people were confirmed dead, followed by the interior minister saying that no deaths were confirmed, while 10 to 12 were missing.
Read more: At least 31 dead in south Philippines floods, landslides
“The situation is very complicated and very serious because probably some of those people are under the mud,” Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi told RAI state TV from an emergency command center in Rome.
ANSA reported that at least 10 buildings collapsed. One family with a newborn that was previously reported missing was located and was receiving medical care, according to the Naples prefect.
Video from the island showed small bulldozers clearing roads, while residents used hoses to try to get mud out of their homes. One man, identified as Benjamin Iacono, told Sky TG24 that mud overwhelmed three adjacent shops that he owns, completely wiping out his inventory. He estimated damage at 100,000 euros to 150,000 euros ($104,000 to $156,000)
Firefighters and the Coast Guard were conducting search and rescues, initially hampered by strong winds that prevented helicopters and boats from reaching the island.
The densely populated mountainous island is a popular tourist destination for both its beaches and spas. A 4.0-magnitude quake on the island in 2017 killed two people, causing significant damage to the towns of Casamicciola and neighboring Lacco Ameno.