Government Braces for Tide of Migrants

Authorities, who have picked up more than 1,200 immigrants in the past week, braced for the arrival of 1,300 more as coast guards and a pro-Kurdish news agency in Turkey said other ships were on their way. A ship carrying 386 people, more than half of them Kurds, had arrived earlier, and Italy stood firmly by its stated aim to grant asylum to Kurds fleeing persecution. The upsurge in arrivals prompted fears in Germany and Austria that Italy was opening the floodgates to a tide of immigrants bound for elsewhere in Europe.