'We have one simple goal:' Florida school shooting survivors hit road to rally youth vote

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TODAY:

• Survivors of the Parkland, Fla., high school shooting launcha 60-day, 20-state bus tour to rally the youth vote ahead of November's U.S. midterm elections
• A European crackdown on migrants is picking up steam even as new numbers suggest that there has been a drastic reduction in illegal crossings of the Mediterranean
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Parkland survivors rally youth vote

Survivors of the Parkland, Fla., high school shooting won't be taking a summer vacation from their campaign for stricter gun laws, announcing plans this morning for a 60-day, 20-state bus tour to rally the youth vote ahead of November's U.S. midterm elections.

The March for Our Lives: Road to Change tour will start on June 15 in Chicago with a peace march alongside students from St. Sabina Academy. The school has been trying to tackle gun violence in a city where 3,457 people were shot and 650 killed in 2017 alone.

The cross-country campaign includes an event in Santa Fe, Texas, where 10 students and staff died in a school shooting last month. There will also be stops in communities in Connecticut, California and South Carolina that have been traumatized by mass attacks.

A separate tour of Florida will see other Parkland students hold anti-gun rallies in all 25 of the state's congressional districts.

"We are traveling from city to city, focusing on places where the NRA has bought and paid for politicians who refuse to take simple steps to save our lives," the Parkland survivors said in a news release Monday. "We have one simple goal: rally as many young people as possible to register and commit to vote in November."

Four million Americans turn 18 this year, and thus become eligible to vote for the first time.

"There's a lot more love than hate out there," David Hogg, one of the student organizers, told the political website Axios, explaining the group's decision to keep pressing for reforms despite stiff opposition from gun groups, and sometimes virulent personal attacks.

The summer campaign announcement comes just one day after graduation ceremonies at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, with four empty chairs marking the place of the seniors who were among the 14 teenagers and three staff murdered on Feb. 14.

The student activists have made voter registration one of the key elements of their efforts to force gun control onto America's legislative agenda. Volunteers with clipboards circulated during the massive March for Our Lives protests at the end of March, helping thousands of teens to register. And earlier this month, the Parkland group partnered with 1,000 other U.S. high schools in 46 states to set up registration booths in lunchrooms and hallways.

In the 2016 U.S. elections, the youth turnout was 50 per cent, down two per cent from the 2008 elections and right around the 2012 mark, but well above the 43 per cent who participated in the 2014 midterms.

In a politically polarized nation, even a small uptick in youth turnout could make a difference in what are expected to be tight election races this fall.

Ryan Deitsch, another Parkland survivor, laid out the rationale at an event last month.

If turnout among young voters can be goosed to 60 per cent, "the youth in this country will control every election to come," Deitsch said. "Every lawmaker who doesn't listen to us now will surely listen to us after November.

"This is a turning point for members of our generation."

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Migrant crackdown in Europe

A European crackdown on migrants is picking up steam even as new numbers suggest that there has been a drastic reduction in illegal crossings of the Mediterranean.

This morning, police in Paris began to clear out two makeshift refugee camps in the 10th and 18th arrondissements, which had become the home of several thousand people from Sudan, Eritrea and Afghanistan.

The move comes just days after the dismantling of another large camp in Northern Paris.

The residents are being bused to shelters where they will have their "administrative status" reviewed, with some in line for deportation. Although past history suggests that it will be a temporary fix -- with police having removed more than 28,000 migrants from the city over the past three years.

In Sicily, meanwhile, Italy's new Interior Minister Matteo Salvini today proclaimed that "the party is over" for illegal migrants, vowing to deport at least 100,000 of them back to their countries of origin.

The leader of the right-wing League party wants to open new detention and deportation centres in every region of the country. Italy "can't be transformed into a refugee camp," Salvani said in an interview.

He added that it is time for the country to take the sort of drastic action that its European Union partners have so far been unwilling to embrace. "It's clear and obvious that Italy has been abandoned. Now we have to see facts."

However, the crisis that brought more than 600,000 people to Italy's shores in recent years appears to be petering out. Deals with Turkey and Libya to stop people-smugglers from using their coasts have dramatically reduced the number of sea crossings.

The UN's International Organization for Migration reports that 32,080 migrants and refugees entered Europe by sea through the first 150 days of 2018, with about 42 per cent landing in Italy and the remainder split between Greece and Spain. That's less than half the 70,870 who had arrived by the same point last year, and just 15 per cent of the more than 230,000 who made the crossing in 2016.

As of the end of May, the IOM had tallied 655 deaths at sea, about 1,000 fewer than during the same period last year.

That tragic toll increased over the weekend, however, with the drowning of 48 migrants off the coast of Tunisia. Nine more, including six children, drowned off Turkey.

Politicians from Balkan nations will meet later this week to try and close off another migrant route to Europe. The regional meeting has been convened by Bosnian authorities after an uptick in refugee claimants from Iran.

By the end of last month, officials in Montenegro, Albania, and Bosnia and Herzegovina had processed a total of 6,700 new migrants since the beginning of the year, about twice last year's number.

Quote of the moment

"Me being one of the first ones, I feel there's some guilt that I still feel every day and shame. You hope that it goes away, but I don't think that it will ever go away."

- Amlie-Frdrique Gagnon, one of four victims of Bertrand Charestwho are going public with details of how the former national ski coach groomed and abused them in the 1990s.

• WATCH: Adrienne Arsenault's exclusive interview with the women, and see further coverage of their story on The National this evening on CBC Television and streamed online

Ski coach abuse victims speak publicly for first time

6 years ago

Duration 3:40

CBC's Adrienne Arsenault sat down with four former Canadian athletes

What The National is reading

• Rescuers struggle to reach area of deadly Guatemala volcano eruption (CBC)
• North Korea fires military leadership ahead of summit with U.S. (Asia Times)
• Toronto police officer on paid suspension for 11 years could finally be fired (CBC)
• Jordanian PM quits after austerity protests (BBC)
• Forty-five years since Edmonton couple vanished en route to Montreal (Edmonton Journal)
• Top confidant of Emmanuel Macron to face French corruption probe (Deutsche Welle)
• Former New Zealand sex worker becomes a dame in Queen's birthday honours (Guardian)
• GM exec wrecks Corvette pace car at Detroit Indy Grand Prix (Fox News)

Today in history

June 4, 1983: Cardboard wine

Canada already had wine in a box, but was it ready for vino in a tetrapak? Quebec's San Gabriel winery thought so, marketing a red, a white and a calorie-reduced "light" white in the same sort of drinking boxes that your kids take to school. Not only would it keep for a year, but "it should be the cheapest wine in Canada," Havard Gould reports, since it cost so little to "bottle" and ship. The straw wasn't included, however.

Cardboard-boxed wine

41 years ago

Duration 2:03

Is it still a romantic dinner when the waiter serves wine from a "drinking box" style container?

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