Operation against human smugglers

After months spent gathering intelligence about people smuggling networks across the Mediterranean, a European Union military operation will start stopping and seizing the boats attempting the smuggling operation. EU members announced plans earlier this year amid a public outcry after a string of vessels carrying migrants to Europe from North Africa capsized en route, killing hundreds of people. But analysts and rights groups have expressed skepticism over whether the new phase of the naval operation will do much good, especially for the desperate people trying to reach European shores. The operation is aimed at disrupting the human smuggling and trafficking networks in the Mediterranean and to prevent the further loss of life at sea. Starting Wednesday, sailors on EU naval vessels will “be able to board, search, seize and divert vessels suspected of being used for human smuggling or trafficking on the high seas.” The operation is focused on the area of the Mediterranean north of Libya, from where some of the hundreds of thousands of migrants attempting to get to Europe this year have set out in the direction of Italy. Europe is facing its biggest refugee and migrant crisis since World War II, with a large proportion of those trying to reach the continent's wealthier nations coming from war- torn Syria.

In Other News Inmates from the Eastern New York Correctional Facility defeated the prestigious Harvard debate team in mid-September as part of the Bard Prison Initiative, a program run by Bard College to provide college education to qualifying prisoners. They've defeated a nationally ranked team from the University of Vermont and the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York. (They lost a rematch against West Point, and it's become something of a rivalry.) The prison club had invited the Harvard College Debating Union to participate. The Bard Prison Initiative, which has 300 students enrolled across New York state, reports that less than 2% of its formerly imprisoned students return to prison. By comparison, nearly 68 out of every 100 prisoners across the country are rearrested within three years of release, with more than half returning to prison. As a Tennessee community prepares to bury a girl allegedly killed by an 11-year-old boy over a puppy, more details emerged about the gun used in the shooting. The preteen faces first-degree murder charges in the death of MaKayla Dyer, 8. He fired at her from his house Saturday, killing the girl who was in her yard. The boy used his father's 12-gauge shotgun, which he got from an unlocked closet. He is being held on a first-degree murder charge in a juvenile detention center. The center's superintendent, Richard Bean, said the boy is the youngest held there on a murder charge in his 44-year career. Bean described him as "very tiny," weighing about 55 pounds. He is in a regular "pod" that holds up to 16 other juveniles between ages 12 and 17. The incident started when the boy asked to see the girl's puppy. When she said no, the boy got a gun and shot her dead Saturday.