Tripoli

Close to 100 migrants were feared missing after their boat sank off the Libyan coast near Tripoli on Thursday, a coastguard official said.

Coastguard spokesman Ayoub Qassem said 23 migrants were rescued from the craft off Gargaresh, a western suburb of Tripoli. Survivors said the inflatable boat had set off with about 120 people on board.

Humanitarian groups operating rescue ships off the coast of Libya picked up more than 700 migrants out of seven flimsy and overcrowded boats on April 5, the Italian Coast Guard said.

The rising tide of an aggressive blend of nationalism and Islamism might be prompting Ankara to pursue its own WMDs, and its preference appears to be long-range missiles. As Turkey feels more threatened by real or (mostly) imagined enemies, it increasingly views maximum possible military deterrence as essential to both survival (a defensive goal) and assertiveness (an offensive one).

A quartet of international groups said March 18 it supported efforts by Libya's unity government to assert control over Tripoli after days of fighting with rival militias.

The Cairo meeting by representatives of the United Nations, European Union, Arab League and African Union came a day after gunmen opened fire at demonstrators protesting against militias in Libya's capital.

Police in Tripoli, in the Peloponnese, on Monday detained two men, aged 39 and 40, believed to be members of a criminal racket that has been defrauding elderly residents of the broader region by posing as employees of the Public Power Corporation.

About 730 migrants were rescued off the Libyan coast on Feb. 22 after seven rescue operations mounted by the Italian Coast Guard and the SOS Mediterranee aid group.

The migrants were mainly from sub-Saharan Africa, said the coast guard, which is coordinating rescue operations in the central Mediterranean.

Three migrants were killed when a boat carrying at least eight people sank on the Maritza River in northwestern Turkey early on Feb. 22, state-run Anadolu Agency reported. 

Scores of bodies of African migrants washed ashore in Libya, in the western city of Zawiya on the Mediterranean Sea, a spokesman for the Libyan Red Crescent said on Feb. 21.

The drownings - at least 74 bodies were found in Zawiya - are the latest tragedy at sea after migrant deaths rose to record levels along the Libya-Italy smuggling route over the past months.

'The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between' by Hisham Matar (Penguin Random House, 280 pages, $26)

Panathinaikos and PAOK have taken a clear advantage for a spot in the semifinals of the Greek Cup after the first leg of the quarterfinals, but Olympiakos and AEK had problems against Atromitos and Platanias respectively.