REFUGEES:  Fate of Hundreds Unknown
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ROME, Oct 5 (IPS) - UN officials have been denied permission to check  the safety of about 850 migrants deported to Libya from Italy  since Friday.
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TUCSON After escaping death threats in a town north of Baghdad, Nadhum Ali al-Hasnawi and his family landed in the United States six weeks ago as refugees, hoping to build a new life for themselves. But since its arrival, the family has rarely left their apartment. "It is like Iraq all over again...
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WASHINGTON -- The United States will soon begin admitting a bigger trickle of the more than 2 million refugees who have fled Iraq, acknowledging for the first time the country may never be safe for some who have helped the United States there.
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ATHENS (Der Spiegel) - According to recent reports resulting from October fact-finding missions conducted by the German Working Group on Refugees, Pro Asyl, and the Greek Group, Lawyers for the Rights of Refugees and Migrants, the Greek coast guard has not only been rejecting but torturing asylum seekers that are arriving in ever greater numbers on the Aegean coast.  Refugee organisations are demanding a response at the European level. ...refugee seekers' boats, often barely afloat, are being forced out of Greece's territorial waters. Some passengers are being set ashore on uninhabited islands on the Turkish Greek border region, provided with no water or food... It is hardly a secret that Greece has shown reluctance recently to accept refugees and asylum seekers. Earlier this year, the Mediterranean country was lampooned for the fact that it turned down almost all of the asylum applications it received from Iraqis fleeing violence back home.  But now it looks as though Greece may be in blatant violation of human rights norms. Reports released this month by Greek and German refugee organisations suggest that the Greek coast guard in the Aegean Sea has been systematically maltreating and obstructing asylum seekers arriving on their shores. Fact-finding missions conducted in summer and October of 2007 by Pro Asyl and Lawyers for the Rights of Refugees and Migrants found that refugee seekers' boats, often barely afloat, are being forced out of Greece's territorial waters. Some passengers are being set ashore on uninhabited islands on the Turkish Greek border region, provided with no water or food.  The investigative missions visited three detention centers on Greek islands and found the conditions to be "degrading and inhuman." In one case, on the island of Chios, there were reports of electric shock treatments, mock executions and beatings. In an independent report, the Greek branch of the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), described the detention center on Samos, an island less than two kilometers from the Turkish coast, as being "deplorable" and demanded that the government close it down. Fully 391 people were found living in a room designed for 120. The staff consisted of one doctor, one social worker and a caretaker. Read more...
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About 1,000 Swedes are listed as missing, and that number adds to the confusion and angst.
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Pamela Bone witnesses Africa&#39;s latest humanitarian crisis, the flight of refugees from Sudan to Chad. On the bank of the wadi, which two weeks ago was full of fast-flowing water but is now only a few muddy
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The U.N. refugee agency is  alerting more than 33,000 vulnerable Iraqi refugees in Damascus  through text messages on cell phones, which many of them use to  keep in touch with family and friends.
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The fate of thousands of people missing in India&#39;s Andaman and Nicobar islands is still unclear as rescuers battle to reach remote communities.
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Without security, a generation may remain trapped in congested camps, afraid to return to their homes.
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Red Cross says unknown number are fleeing homes, caught between Taliban and security forces
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There were apparently multiple casualties, but the numbers were uncertain in the initial confusion.
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As many as 122 species have disappeared since 1980, and 1,900 are in danger of becoming extinct.
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Researchers claim to have solved the mystery of the people who simply do not count. It could be because they are lost for words.
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DARFUR is a real tragedy. First of all, it is a tragedy for the two million refugees and then for the widows and orphans of the 70,000 people who have been slain.
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Nearly 90 refugees from Chechnya have been granted refugee status in Poland after being previously turned away, Interfax-West news agency reported Monday.
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Nearly 2 million Iraqis have fled their homeland -- what one U.N. official calls a "simmering crisis." In Jordan, Iraq refugees make up more than one-tenth of the population. In the last year, Dr. Nafie Abtan has gone from prominent doctor to refugee. "I feel disaster," he says.
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A UN report urges better protection for millions of internally displaced people - refugees in all but name.