The local authority’s chief executive, Massimiliano Cordeschi, has noted an “incongruity” in the total numbers of residents and of those seeking aid.
[…]
Mr Cordeschi said a possible explanation for the discrepancy in the compensation claims could be that a number of people without an official address had applied for compensation.

Applications from people who had moved away from L’Aquila to live in Rome and elsewhere but had failed to change their official residence, could also account for the inconsistency, he added.

L’Aquila’s mayor Massimo Cialento insists that his constituents “are not cheats”. He should know: They voted for him.

Maria Daniela (Dania) Avallone is due in a Rome court on 15 April accused amongst other things, of referring to the Eritrean president as a dictator, continually ’disturbing’ Eritrean government sponsored events in Italy through protesting, and insulting the organisers in Italian and Tigrinya, an Eritrean language.

The charges stem from an incident that occurred last year on 26 October, when around fifty Eritrean government supporters pelted human rights activists who were picketing an Eritrean festival that was opened and attended by the Eritrean Minister of Defence. During the assault Ms. Avallone lost consciousness after a stone struck her in the kidneys, and was kept in hospital overnight for observation.

The legal complaint against Ms Avallone was ostensibly brought by “the Eritrean Community in Italy”. However, signatories to the complaint are said to include at least two members of the Eritrean diplomatic entourage.

Photos taken at the festival protest are posted here with a report in Italian.

The government of Eritrea is one of the most repressive and religiously intolerant in the world. Thousands of Christians, including children, are held in deplorable conditions. At least eight are known to have died in custody in recent years. Eritrea regularly shows up on lists of countries that trample on the human rights of believers.

Last December, authorities conducted another round of mass arrests of Christians, bringing the total in custody to about three thousand.

Reporters Without Borders has ranked Eritrea the worst nation on the planet for press freedom, worse even than North Korea. An estimated 20,000 political prisoners are held in Eritrean jails.

Gospel singer Helen Berhane, who escaped to Denmark in 2007 after two years of imprisonment and torture, last week urged the European Union to withhold a €122 million foreign aid package to Eritrea. She joins an international chorus of objections to the aid proposal, including Reporters Without Borders and the US ambassador to the UN.

Eritrea thumbed its nose at the International Criminal Court last month by inviting the international pariah Omar al-Bashir, President of Sudan, for a state visit—his first since the court issued a warrant for his arrest on charges of crimes against humanity.

More news stories of persecution in Eritrea can be seen here and here.

h/t Religious Intelligence

“People have under-estimated the magnitude of trafficking,” a worried Professor Ehindero warned the nation in an interview with Next on Sunday, saying that no fewer than five million children in the country are today prone to be trafficked within and outside the country.

Ehindero said “Studies carried out in the Northern Region shows that about 10 million children are exploited by traffickers under the Almajiri system” and that in Kano alone, “we have about three million children, while in Lagos, there are about one million children who are vulnerable to being exploited by traffickers.”

Ehindero’s records are matched by other findings that speak of an alarming growth in the rate of child slavery in Nigeria. The current findings of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre, in the United Kingdom, indicate that Nigeria is now only second to China in the trafficking of children into the United Kingdom.

Nigeria and Italy have signed a co-operative agreement to fight international slavery. Nigerian police will work side-by-side with Italian authorities at Italian border points to help identify and apprehend human traffickers and rescue their victims.

The story begins back in May, when a judge in Modica (in Sicily) found local historian and author Carlo Ruta guilty of the crime of “stampa clandestina” – or publishing a “clandestine” newspaper – in respect of his blog. The judge ruled that since the blog had a headline, that made it an online newspaper, and brought it within the law’s remit.

The penalties for this crime are not onerous: A fine of 250 Euros or a prison sentence of up to two years. [Two years' imprisonment sounds pretty onerous to me -- ed.] Carlo Ruta was fined and ordered to take down his site, which has now been replaced by a blank page, headed “Site under construction”, and a link directing surfers to his new site. Hardly serious stuff – except that he now has a criminal record, and his original site has disappeared.

The ruling against Mr Ruta could still be overturned by a higher court.  In the meantime, another Italian journalist-blogger has been hauled into court.

I’d imagine Canada’s “human rights” commissars would love to see a similar law here.

h/t: Tongue Tied 3