Italy: Human Trafficking gang busted

Italian police in the northeastern city of Udine carried out a successful operation titled "Goldfish-2" dismantling a major human trafficking gang in the area.This criminal gang has allegedly trafficked hundreds of illegal immigrants from India and Pakistan into Europe. A majority of the illegal immigrants end up in Romania, Hungary and Slovakia, via countries such as the Ukraine and Russia.

For another assignment in this class, I am looking into human trafficking issues in the United States and abroad. I found an article today on AKI website about the gang bust and after reading it I can see how big of a problem human trafficking is. There is the obvious problem of illegal immigrants entering countries and the effects on the security of their borders. But an additional issue is the standard of living of the immigrants during and after they are illegally transported. This article discussed immigrants entering the European Union coming particularly from Pakistan and India. This issue seems to be on a larger scale than most people realize.

Could their living situation really be so horrible in their homeland that they subject themselves to these dangerous gang members?
Where would the international community even begin to minimize this problem?

In this article, it was mentioned that this gang had headquarters in Moscow, Italy and Slovakia and people working together between the three locations. This is scary to me because this issue is on an international scale. Criminals in different regions, with different laws and different governments, are collaborating to move these people illegally in and out of countries. When I look further into this issue for my project I'm sure I will discover that human trafficking is even worse and bigger than what I can see now.

Italy as head of the G8

As of January, Italy has been the new head of the Group of Eight ministerial conference. Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini says that the main goal of the G8 this term will be to make moves towards a new "global governance" for economic and security issues.
Italy has included additional countries in the meetings regarding the approach to Afghanistan security. They plan to include Iran as a crucial regional addition to the discussion as well as China, India, Russia, central Asia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
The main issue on the agenda is to defuse the Islamist terrorist threat ''which has its roots and bases in Afghanistan and Pakistan.''
(I read this account in an article found at ANSA.com)

Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata is based and distributed in Italy and it's main auidence are Italians. I took note of today's headlines on ANSA.com and they were for the most part regarding international news. This media outlet focuses more on Italy's involvement in world affairs rather than local politics, government and issues. It is Italian news on a larger scale.

Also ranked among the "top news" category were headlines about soccer, France, Sarah Palin's visit to Rome and additional stories of what to expect from Italy as the new head of the G8.