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For Immediate Release
February, 16 2011, 03:17pm EDT
Contact:
AIUSA media relations office, 202-509-8194
Amnesty International Urges Italy to Effectively Address Tunisian Migrants 'Emergency'
WASHINGTON
Amnesty International has urged the Italian authorities to deal with the humanitarian needs of thousands of migrants and asylum seekers leaving Tunisia following recent unrest.
More than 5,000 migrants have landed on the Italian island of Lampedusa, according to authorities, who have described the events as a "humanitarian emergency."
"A 'humanitarian emergency' demands a humanitarian response, not a law and order one," said Nicola Duckworth, Amnesty International's Europe director.
"This means that boats carrying migrants and asylum seekers from Tunisia, Egypt or other North African countries must not be pushed back," continued Duckworth. "Everyone arriving is entitled to be treated with dignity, to be granted assistance and access to a fair asylum procedure."
However, the country's foreign ministry has suggested that Italy and other E.U. countries should "stop the Tunisian wave," and recently deployed more boats to patrol the country's coasts.
Amid increasing tension over the issue, on Monday night Italian border police reportedly shot at a boat carrying Egyptian migrants and asylum seekers, wounding the vessel's pilot.
Italian authorities have reinforced the patrolling of the coast following the wave of migration in the Mediterranean.
Large numbers of people were forced to sleep outdoors for several days before the Italian authorities reopened the reception center on Lampedusa.
Italy routinely detains irregular migrants, and in the past has conducted mass expulsions, in violation of international law.
"Detention should only ever be a last resort, not an automatic response," said Duckworth. " No one should be sent back before they are able to make their case or explain their circumstances before the relevant authorities, and certainly there should not be any mass forced expulsions."
Frontex, the European Union's agency for external border security, has agreed to support Italy's calls for assistance in stemming the flow of migrants from North Africa.
"The main objective of any patrolling of national or international waters carried out by Italy, Tunisia or any other force, such as Frontex, should be the safety and security of those found at sea," added Duckworth.
Amnesty International is a Nobel Peace Prize-winning grassroots activist organization with 3 million supporters, activists and volunteers in more than 150 countries campaigning for human rights worldwide. The organization investigates and exposes abuses, educates and mobilizes the public, and works to protect people wherever justice, freedom, truth and dignity are denied.
Amnesty International is a global movement of millions of people demanding human rights for all people - no matter who they are or where they are. We are the world's largest grassroots human rights organization.
(212) 807-8400LATEST NEWS
Trump-Endorsed Candidate Loses to Democrat in President's Mar-a-Lago Home District
Even Trump's mail-in ballot was not enough to keep Democrat Emily Gregory from winning the seat over Republican Jon Maples in a district swing of more than 13 points.
Mar 25, 2026
A Democrat in Florida running to win a state house seat in the Palm Beach district that includes US President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate was declared the winner in a special election on Tuesday night, defeating the Trump-endorsed Republican in yet another powerful rebuke to the running of the country by the president and his party.
Emily Gregory flipped Florida's House District 87, defeating Republican Jon Maples, who Trump loudly endorsed and cast his vote for personally via mail-in ballot—something he wants to bar other voters nationwide from being able to do. Trump said on Monday that Maples, a financial planner who previously held office at the municipal level, was the choice of "so many of my Palm Beach County friends.”
But with almost all votes counted late Tuesday night, the Associated Press reported Gregory led by 2.4 percentage points, or 797 votes. In 2024, the district went to Republicans by 11 points.
"Republicans are vulnerable everywhere.”
Political strategist Sawyer Hackett named the obvious implication by saying, at least through November of 2026, "Trump will be represented by a Democrat in the Florida legislature."
“I think it demonstrates where the Florida voter is,” Gregory, who runs a fitness center for postpartum mothers, told Politico in an interview following her victory. “They want someone who is focused on solutions and the issues and not focused on the noise.”
“If Mar-a-Lago is vulnerable, imagine what’s possible this November,” said Heather Williams, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, in response to the victory. Williams noted that Gregory's win was the 29th seat that Democrats have flipped from GOP control since Trump returned to office last year.
“Gas prices are spiking, grocery costs are up, and families can’t get by," she said. "It’s clear voters at the polls are fed up with Republicans. A Trump +11 district in his own backyard shouldn’t be in play for Democrats, but tonight proves Republicans are vulnerable everywhere.”
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With First-of-Its-Kind Bill, Sanders and AOC Propose Moratorium on New AI Data Centers
"These massive facilities are sucking up precious water resources, paving over farmland, driving climate change, and disrupting the fabric of communities," said one supporter of the new legislation.
Mar 25, 2026
Two of the leading progressives in the US Congress, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, announced legislation on Wednesday that would impose a nationwide moratorium on the construction of new artificial intelligence data centers amid mounting concerns over their insatiable consumption of power and water resources, impacts on the climate, and other harms.
Sanders' (I-Vt.) office said in a press release announcing the Artificial Intelligence Data Center Moratorium Act that the construction pause would remain in effect "until strong national safeguards are in place to protect workers, consumers, and communities, defend privacy and civil rights, and ensure these technologies do not harm our environment."
Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) are set to formally introduce their legislation at a press conference on Wednesday at 4 pm ET.
Food & Water Watch (FWW), which last year became the first national organization in the US to call for a total moratorium on the approval of new AI data centers, celebrated the first-of-its-kind bill and called on other members of Congress to "move quickly to sponsor, champion, and pass" it. FWW's groundbreaking call for a national AI data center moratorium was later echoed by hundreds of advocacy organizations at the state and national levels.
“We need a halt to the explosive growth of new AI data center construction now, because political and community leaders across the country have been caught completely off guard by this aggressive, profit-hungry industry," Mitch Jones, FWW's managing director of policy and litigation, said in a statement Wednesday. "It has yet to be determined if—not how—the industry can ever operate in a manner that sufficiently protects people and society from the profusion of inherent hazards and harms that data centers bring wherever they appear."
“Long before the recent spike in global oil prices, Americans throughout the country were dealing with skyrocketing electricity rates due to the egregious consumption and jolting grid impacts levied by Big Tech’s AI data centers," Jones added. "Meanwhile, these massive facilities are sucking up precious water resources, paving over farmland, driving climate change, and disrupting the fabric of communities. We mustn’t allow another unchecked Silicon Valley scheme to profit off our backs while sticking us with the bill."
In a detailed report released last week, titled The Urgent Case Against Data Centers, FWW pointed to some of the "documented harms caused by AI and data centers," including:
- Enormous energy footprints: A single hyperscale data center can consume as much energy as 2 million US households.
- A lifeline for fossil fuels: The thirst for fuel is being met by keeping old coal-fired power plants running and by building new natural gas ones.
- Skyrocketing electricity costs: Increased energy demand can raise residential rates, which soared 31% from 2020 to 2025 (compared to 4% from 2015 to 2020).
- Drained water resources: By 2028, AI data centers could use as much water as 18.5 million households, just for cooling their servers.
- An investment bubble: A handful of companies are investing in one another and increasingly turning to risky debt structures to hide the threat of the bubble.
- A litany of other harms: This includes massive amounts of electronic waste (e-waste), unrelenting noise pollution, loss of farmland, political instability from deepfake videos, lost revenue from data center tax incentives, and child endangerment from AI chatbots.
Those harms have fueled massive grassroots opposition to AI data centers, with communities organizing to prevent construction in their backyards. One report estimates that between May 2024 and March 2025, local opposition helped tank or delay $64 billion worth of data center projects across the US.
That opposition has pushed local lawmakers to act. According to a tracker maintained by Good Jobs First, "at least 63 local data-center moratorium actions have been introduced, considered, or adopted across dozens of towns and counties," and "some 54 have already passed."
At the state level, Good Jobs First counted "at least 12 in-session states with filed data center moratorium bills this cycle," and noted that some governors have taken or floated executive action to slow or pause AI data center build-outs.
But the Trump administration is trying to move in the opposite direction.
In a national policy framework document unveiled last week, the White House urged Congress to "streamline federal permitting for AI infrastructure construction and operation" and called for a prohibition on state regulation of AI.
Jim Walsh, FWW's policy director, slammed the White House framework as "more of the same nonsense we’ve been hearing for months" and warned that "more data centers mean more climate-killing fracked gas power plants poisoning our air and water, and more stress placed on local communities’ precious water resources."
"The only prudent course of action when it comes to AI," said Walsh, "is to halt the explosive growth of new data center construction now, so that states and communities have the time needed to properly consider their own futures."
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For Third Time in a Month, Senate GOP and Fetterman Block Bill to End Trump's Iran War
"How much death and destruction is enough before they’ll do the right thing and act to end this war?”
Mar 25, 2026
The Republican-controlled US Senate voted late Tuesday to block a resolution aimed at ending President Donald Trump's disastrous, illegal, and deeply unpopular war on Iran as the Pentagon approved a deployment of Army paratroopers to the Middle East, the latest escalation in a conflict the White House claims has already been won.
The latest war powers resolution, led by Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), failed to advance by a vote of 47-53, with Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) joining every Republican except Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) in opposing the measure. If enacted, the bill would have forced the withdrawal of US forces from hostilities against Iran.
Murphy said in a statement following the vote that the consequences of the US-Israeli war on Iran, now in its fourth week, "are stunning in their scope: higher prices for American businesses and American families, a potential global recession, the wasting of billions of dollars of hard-earned taxpayer dollars, and new conflicts in the region that didn't exist before the war began."
"If our Republican colleagues will not do their duty, if they are going to engage in an effort to hide the consequences of the war, if they are going to refuse to ask questions of our incompetent national security leaders at the White House, who have waged this war without planning for the foreseeable consequences, then we will force a debate and a vote on this floor," said Murphy. "This war is not going to make more sense the longer it goes.”
The vote came hours after Trump, speaking from the Oval Office, declared that "this war has been won" even as his administration ordered around 2,000 soldiers from the US Army’s 82nd Airborne Division to begin deploying to the Middle East, heightening concerns that the president intends to launch a ground invasion of Iran.
“We’re keeping our hand on that throttle as long and as hard as is necessary to ensure the interests of the United States of America are achieved on that battlefield," Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday, amid reports that the administration is considering plans to "occupy or blockade" Iran's Kharg Island—which processes the vast majority of Iran's oil exports.
The New York Times reported that the new troop contingent "includes Maj. Gen. Brandon R. Tegtmeier, the division commander, and dozens of his staff members, as well as two battalions, each with about 800 soldiers."
"More of the brigade’s soldiers could be sent in the coming days," the Times noted, citing unnamed officials. "Taken together with some 4,500 Marines already en route to the region, the deployment of the elite Army forces brings the total number of additional ground troops dispatched to the war zone since the conflict started to nearly 7,000."
Ryan Costello, policy director at the National Iranian American Council, said late Tuesday that "with a possible ground invasion of Iran being planned that would trigger mass casualties and deepen a global economic and strategic crisis, only 47 senators upheld their duty to the Constitution and the American people who overwhelmingly oppose this war."
"The blowback of this war is only beginning and will continue to mount—for US interests, the global economy, and the people of Iran," Costello warned. "Those 53 senators who voted to allow the war to continue should make clear: Do they support this war escalating? Do they want Donald Trump to commit troops to a war that they don’t even have the courage to authorize? And how much death and destruction is enough before they’ll do the right thing and act to end this war?"
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