Italy

ROME (AP) — Italy’s right-wing government pressed ahead with plans to crack down on migrants as they arrived by the hundreds on Monday at a Sicilian port after a Coast Guard rescue. Dozens more were taken on board a charity boat from an unseaworthy vessel operated by smugglers, while others came ashore unaided.

This week, the Senate is due to take up proposed legislation put forward by the government of far-right Premier Giorgia Meloni that aims to make it harder for migrants to gain temporary permission to stay in Italy.

ROME, April 9 (Xinhua) -- Piero Rondolino, founder of Italy's high-end rice producer Acquerello, is looking forward to participating in the upcoming China International Consumer Products Expo (CICPE). He hopes that his products will bring the peoples of China and Italy closer together as both boast outstanding food traditions.

The third edition of CICPE will take place between April 10 and April 15 in Haikou, the capital of the southern province of Hainan. Acquerello will join the exhibition along with 146 other Italian brands as Italy is the guest of honor this year.

MONTE CIMONE, Italy, April 3 (Reuters) - Monte Cimone, a popular ski resort in Italy's Apennine Mountains, invested 5 million euros in artificial snowmaking before the winter season in an attempt to stave off the impact of global warming. The money was largely wasted.

The snow cannon proved useless because the water droplets they fire into the air need freezing weather for them to fall to the ground as snow, and until mid-January the temperature never fell below zero Celsius (32 Fahrenheit).

ROME, March 23 (NNN-PRENSA LATINA) — Anti-drug forces of the Arma de Carabinieri of Italy dismantled an international drug trafficking network operating in the north of the country, as a result of investigations started in 2018, a statement says.    

A note published Wednesday on the official site of that gendarmerie corps, indicates that the operations were coordinated by the Prosecutor’s Office of Venice, and participated in the same carabinieri of the commands of Ferrara, Padua, Prato and Vicenza, who managed to occupy a shipment of marijuana, hashish, ketamine and ecstasy.

ROME, March 16 (Xinhua) -- Italy's Council of Ministers on Thursday approved a decree that will allow for the building of the world's longest suspension bridge between the island of Sicily and the Italian mainland.

Such a bridge has been discussed since ancient times, but it is the first time the project has received this level of formal authorization.

In a statement on Thursday, the ministry of infrastructure and transport said the bridge would be "the crown jewel of Italian engineering."

ROME, March 15 (Xinhua) -- Banking giant Credit Suisse lost nearly a fourth of its value Wednesday, amid the growing fallout from the collapse of two regional banks in the United States.

Wednesday marked the second time in three trading sessions since the collapse of California's Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), and the subsequent failure of Signature Bank from New York, that European financial stocks were severely battered.

Nevertheless, the dramatic impact on Credit Suisse in trading Wednesday was largely unexpected, since the institution is so large.

ROME (AP) — Italy’s highest court has ordered a retrial for two American citizens who were convicted in the slaying of an Italian police officer during a sting operation gone bad.

The Court of Cassation late Wednesday threw out the guilty verdicts against Finnegan Lee Elder, now 23, and Gabriel Natale-Hjorth, 22, both convicted in the stabbing death of the 35-year-old caribiniere during a plainclothes operation in July 2019 while the Americans, teens at the time, were on vacation in Rome.

ROME, March 13 (NNN-AGENCIES) — About 30 migrants were missing and presumed drowned after the overcrowded boat they were on capsized during a rescue attempt by a cargo ship off Libya, Italy’s coastguard said.

Seventeen migrants were saved and a search was underway for the missing after the early Sunday-morning attempted rescue in Libya’s search-and-rescue zone, the coastguard said.

ROME (AP) — Intelligence reports indicate nearly 700,000 migrants are in Libya awaiting an opportunity to set out by sea toward Italy, a lawmaker from Premier Giorgia Meloni’s far-right party said Sunday.

Tommaso Foti, the lower parliamentary house whip for the Brothers of Italy Party, told television channel Tgcom24 the Italian secret services estimate there are 685,000 migrants, many of them in Libyan detention camps, who are eager to sail across the central Mediterranean Sea in smugglers’ boats.

Some 105,000 migrants reached Italy by sea in 2022.

11 Mar 2023; MEMO: During a conference held in Rome on Wednesday and Thursday, the Vatican reiterated the importance of free access and worship in all holy places in Jerusalem.

The conference was held by the Joint Working Group for Dialogue, the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue and the Palestinian Commission for Interreligious Dialogue.

Sheikh Mahmoud Al-Habbash, religious affairs advisor to Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, headed the PA delegation.